


Hush Hush

by justhavesex



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Time Travel, based off of the anime erased, choo choo, get ready for a fuck fest of feelings, im pretty sure this counts as mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2018-09-02 01:34:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8646769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justhavesex/pseuds/justhavesex
Summary: Lance ends up in the past to stop the murder of his childhood best friend.





	1. Death One

**Author's Note:**

> i have no fucking idea when the hell keith and lance's bdays are 
> 
> i mean i could just search it up but like lmao i already wrote dates and stuff and im too lazy to fix it and i want this fic to be set in the winter, so like... ya.

 

 

He's four days away from turning twenty-seven.

Four days away from seventeen years passing by since the death of Keith. He isn't a martyr nor does he spend every waking moment laying eyes wide, full of regret. What happened to Keith wasn't his fault— _or it was_?—but as a child there was nothing he could do to stop the events from unfolding. He turns onto his back, looking up to the ceiling with bewildered emotions, emotions that don't quite well his heart like they should, but, he'd be lying to himself if he said he was hurt by those events to an extreme amount. He barely remembers Keith most days, black hair haunting his dreams like a distant echo, smiles and small hands, but that's it. His mother has a lot of photos of the two of them, but Lance tries actively to avoid them.

Keith was his first love, after all.

To move on, his psychiatrist had said in early childhood, that he should forgive himself and move away from the memories. Nothing he does to himself in the future will effect the past, 'let bygones be bygones.' He'd say.

He blinks at the sound of rushing water from his kitchen sink.

 _Did I leave it on_?

He shouldn't have, he doesn't remember leaving it on. He didn't drink last night, because today is Monday for heaven's sake and even though his mother is thoroughly convinced he's a manic depressive underneath all his smiling—he's not, he's pretty sure—he doesn't get drunk on Sunday's. He blinks again, blearily realizing something isn't right. _This isn't my room_. He's spent a lot of time staring at his ceiling in his days, and this isn't _his_. He doesn't have a fan on his ceiling in his room, he turns over, bed sheets pooling off his waist and he stares down at himself.

"Lance, wake up!" His mother calls in exact tune as his alarm clock goes off.

Three thoughts go through Lance's head that exact moment: he doesn't own an alarm clock, his cellphone does all that jazz, secondly somebody's small feet are pressed against his calves, thirdly, he doesn't _live_ with his mother anymore. He sits up immediately, a knee-jerk reaction, looking down to a much small version of his brother's plastered on each side of his body. How old are they now? 20 and 23? How old is _he_?

"Boys time to—" His mom is a lot more pretty than he remembers, her long hair tied back with a floral scrunchy, the lines on her face much less pronounced then he remembers them being. A younger version of his mom. She smiles to him a soft way, it almost feels like a memory, "Your awake? How rare."

"Mom—"

"Come on, time to get breakfast. Keith will be picking you up any moment now, you know? Hurry up."

His heart leaps against his rib-cage, and suddenly he feels like he can't breathe, " _Keith_?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He stands, eyes bulging, as Keith opens his front door.

Keith. Keith as a child, Keith young, black hair, a bright red coat, old looking sneakers; _Keith_. Lance has to fight off a sudden onslaught of emotions. He had sat at the table fighting off a bunch of emotions, mostly confusion but at the sight of Keith he's thoroughly convinced he's stuck in some memory induced dream. Keith died seventeen years ago. His _mom_ lives back in Spain, his two younger brothers aren't little kids, his sister not even _born_ yet. Keith doesn't speak much aside from the casual good morning he offer's Lance's mom, and Lance watches with wide eyes as Keith walks across the floor, shoes off and soft white socks—for a moment, he looks like a ghost. Has his near-birthday triggered repressed memories inside of him?

He thought he got over this. He thought he got over _Keith_.

"Honestly, you're such a good kid coming to pick him up every morning." Lance's mother gushes, hand coming to rub the back of Lance's neck and Lance frowns at her. "Okay you two, off you go." She says kindly, and her eyes sparkle as she coaxes Lance forward.

He almost forgot.

His mother knew Lance had some huge crush on Keith, heck their whole class knew. It wasn't like Lance actively tried to hide it, and Keith never did anything to discourage the behaviour but—

Keith looks at him long, curiously, as though searching for what Lance could be acting so _weird_ about. Hesitantly, long pale fingers are reaching out before his palm turns upwards towards Lance and Lance's heart echoes a dull _thump_. They just stand there, awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, his mother watching them with worried eyes as Lance doesn't immediately grab Keith's hand. His childhood self _always_ grabbed Keith's hand. He never hesitated. The day Keith died, Lance had held his hand. Before that and years after in his dreams.

How many times had he wished he could grab this hand one more time?

Lance staggers backwards, panicked and he feels his hands trembling, his eyes widening and it doesn't make any _sense_. Keith is dead. He got over this fact _years_ ago, so why is he still having such vivid dreams about the past? Why is he still reliving his pain like this? "You—" his voice quivers, expands and then disperses into the cold air of the winter. Keith's bright red jacket reflects the flames from the stove, and Lance for a moment reminds himself that it's just a dream, and reaches out, expecting the feeling to be filled with the same cold emptiness he always feels in his dreams of Keith.

Except Keith's hand is warm within his.

 _Alive_.

"You're being weird," Keith points out, fingers curling over Lance's in a tight feeling. Lance looks to their interlinked hands, before looking to his mother. She waves them off with a gentle smile, and Lance's eyes flicker to the calendar pinned to the wall over the dinner table. _November 13th_. Today. Today is November 13th, that makes sense, he went to sleep and it was the 12th, and suddenly it clicks.

 _I'm being triggered because it's the week Keith died, yeah that has to be it_.

"Mom," he says, wishing his voice didn't come out sounding so _childish_ , he almost really does feel as though he's stepped into the shoes of his younger self. "What year is it?"

"Hm?" She hums softly, wrapping a scarf around his neck, and Keith's fingers are tightening around his, warm but still chilled from the cold. His touch feels like a stabilizer, an echo of what Lance used to crave for every day in his childhood life. "1999. Why, sweety?"

"We should go." Keith says, yanking Lance forward. "Bye, mother."

"Bye bye Keith sweety!" She chimes in immediately, leaning forward to kiss Keith's forehead first, then Lance's. "Are you going to eat dinner here tonight?"

Keith nods mutely, and Lance squeezes his hand a bit more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They arrive to class hand-in-hand almost in absolute silence aside from Keith's few inquisitive questions about how Lance is feeling and none of his classmates say anything about it. Thinking back on it now, in a present mind set, it almost seems _weird_. No one had ever questioned Keith and Lance much about their relationship, just accepting it as a fact of truth, no teasing, no harassment. Just two boys that held hands. He guesses in a way it makes sense, kids are the most adaptable out of anybody, and once somebody _had_ tried to say something mean about them and Keith threatened to beat them up. So that was the end of that.

Lance idly pulls off his scarf, watching as Keith takes Lance's gloves and puts them both in his backpack.

"Morning," Pidge says slowly, yawning into the palm of her— _or him_? when was it, when did Pidge decide she didn't want to be be referred to as a female anymore, when did that collapse? He feels slightly on edge, as though he's walked into an unfamiliar territory—hand before ducking away from Hunk who attempts to grab her into his typical morning hug. Lance stares at them, Hunk and Pidge relatively look the same in the present tense. But not children. Pidge still has the same dewy skin look, round cheeks and wide eyes full of curiosity. But Pidge doesn't wear dresses anymore, or skirts, like this Pidge does. She stopped after Keith died. Hunk is still largely built, smile just as kind. Pidge is now a aerospace engineer and Hunk is a construction worker. Years of hurting is what built their relationships so close in the future. Childish friendships forced to become a support group after Keith's death.

"Morning guys," Hunk says coming to pat Lance's shoulder and Lance watches the movement with lingering eyes. "What's up?"

"Lance is being weird," Keith says slowly.

"Nothing new then." Hunk agree's breezily, patting Lance's shoulder one more time. "You okay?"

"Hm, yeah I guess."

The bell chimes and the teacher comes in, her smile wide and cheery, way too cheery for an adult woman. Lance almost feels bad for her, waking up in the morning has always been hard for him but he doesn't _have_ to pretend to be happy until at least till mid-noon. Keith lingers at his side for a few seconds, and Lance reaches out—not really thinking much about it, this is a dream, he repeats, a dream—and grabs Keith's hand to squeeze it with a small smile, and semi-content Keith goes to sit down. It feels like a heavy haze the entire class time, the lesson long and boring more because he _feels_ kind of like he has the attention of a child again, and because he already knows all this stuff. When he feels tired, he allows his eyes to slowly shut.

_I will wake up in my boring room in my boring apartment, and, Keith will be dead again._

Like a chant, a chant he's used multiple times before, and he falls asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"He's really asleep."

Lance blinks blearily, eyelids feeling heavy as he slowly opens his eyes to find Keith leaning onto his elbow on the front of his desk, frowning at Lance as though he's done something highly unusual. "Were you playing games all last night?" Keith asks, sounding accusing. He _wasn't_ , he's an adult. Adults don't play games into the wee hours of the morning. He blinks a few more times, panic settling within him heavy and strange.

 _I didn't wake up to_ _reality_.

"No," he says almost absentmindedly, coming up to pinch his left cheek then his right. "Why aren't I waking up?"

Keith stares at him strangely, "You _are_ awake."

"Are you okay Lance?" Pidge asks, actually seeming _worried_. And Lance wants to tell her he's fine, but hallucinating about his dead boyfriend he had when he was 10 is still haunting him and he's closer to 30 than 20 now, it shouldn't be bothering him to this extent anymore. He had his teen angst. He had his period, he did his _dues_. So why is it that every time he thinks he's moved away from Keith's memory is he brought backwards? Tumbling back, and it always hurts as it did the first time he saw Keith's dead body. Pure white, lids closed, lips pale. He held none of the life Lance had remembered.

The Keith that he loved _is_ dead.

"Maybe he's sad after reading that comic I lent him," Hunk says, throwing a sympathetic look Lance's way. "I was really sad after reading it too."

"Comic?"

"Yeah it's about a superhero that goes back in time to save his lover! It's really sad." Hunk says, shaking his head like a wet-dog and Lance suddenly feels off balance. _Goes back in time_ , he couldn't have, that's absurd, he's wished for it multiple times but _still_ —it's absurd. People can't just one day and wake up in the past. It'd be more believable if he was in a coma re-living the period that caused him the most trauma in his entire life. "But it was his greatest regret, and he couldn't move past it."

"So he ended up going back in time." Lance remembers this story, he re-read it fourteen times after Keith's death, had spent nights crying heavily as he wished and _wished_ for something to drag him into the past, anything so he could prevent Keith from being dead. He would have done anything to save Keith. Maybe he still would. He feels stupid, actually kind of starting to believe the stupid comic book plot, believing that maybe it's finally happened to _him_. That maybe he really will be able to save Keith. "It's stupid," Lance mutters, subconsciously feeling himself reaching out for Keith's hand, "Once someone dies... they don't come back."

Keith frowns at him. "Lance?"

"Not true!" Hunk objects, glaring at Lance, "He ends up saving her!"

Keith's hands are soft before him, idly tracing the tips of his fingers over the lines in Keith's palms. _This is too vivid to be a dream_ , Lance decides on. And he's right. There's no way he'd be able to conjure the exact way a person's palm looks in his dreams. There's too much detail, it's too _real_. He feels stupid, but if on the off-chance this _isn't_ a dream; maybe it really is a chance to save Keith.

Wasn't that his greatest regret? Not saving him?

Keith's fingers come sliding between his, their hands held between each other. "If you died I would come back no matter how long it'd take to save you." Keith says simply, and Lance looks up, abruptly startled by the declaration. Pidge laughs.

"It's not me you have to worry about," Lance says sheepishly, gripping their hands together tightly, before looking up to smile at Keith. "You guys didn't eat lunch without me, did you?"

"Nope," Hunk grunts, "We would never betray you like that."

"Food isn't life, Hunk." Pidge says, oddly unimpressed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keith dies November 17th, 1999.

He's kidnapped, strangled and his body dumped in the river four blocks away from their school. They find the body two weeks after he went missing. He feels like, knowing that it's coming, will make it a lot easier to stop. He just needs to be around Keith 24/7 that day—which honestly won't be that hard—it's a Friday. He can ask Keith to sleep over for the weekend, not unusual, and they'll spend every moment together and ta-dah, no kidnapping.

They're on November 14th, he has three days to prepare for the attack.

Lance lingers at his desk long after the bell chimes through the school—Lance wishes he could close his eyes, forget the haunting melody of the bell, that when he turns his head he'll be awake and in his room—but his eyes flicker open, Keith is standing in front of him, frown present and steadily growing. Lance takes his time putting his things in his bag, wondering exactly how he's supposed to act the role of a child again. How do children even _talk_? Keith would notice if his speaking pattern has changed, and honestly, it scares him into being silent.

Hunk and Pidge linger by the door, but Lance can see from the corner of his eye Keith mouthing the words ' _go_ ' to them. So, it has come to confrontation. He assumed it would. Keith has always been that type, that's why they ended up so open about their cute little kid-crush in the first place. Keith, it was always Keith. Lance was always loud and unable to be secretive, always wearing his heart on his sleeves, delicate and easily hurt. Keith was always full of courage, of strength. He led the way for Lance; he trail blazed and like a madman Lance was drawn straight into the flames. The class empties out and Lance finally looks up after zipping up his backpack.

"You—"

"It's fine." Lance says, wishing he could remember the colloquial child way of speaking. " _I'm_ fine."

Keith frowns, obviously disbelieving. He shakes his head, and reaches out to Lance and Lance blinks wide in surprise when Keith _kisses_ him. _God_ him and Keith were kissing when they were ten? Aren't they like four years too young for that and—

Keith frowns more heavily, and Lance goes red. "You _are_ acting weird!"

"I'm not!"

"Fine!" Lance snaps back, feeling suddenly nostalgic. _No_ , something heavier. "I just missed you!" He doesn't mean to let it slip, or allow the words to come out so heavy and full of meaning the way they truly _do_ fall out. It doesn't even make sense, he can tell, because Keith looks confused.

"What? Over the weekend? Are you an idiot?"

He really does feel like he's going to cry. And in alarm—actually through the alarm on _Keith's_ face—he realizes he already _is_ crying. His entire face feels inflamed, bottom lip trembling and Keith just calls him stupid and hugs him. It _is_ stupid to Keith, he knows. But to him it means a lot more. Keith is his childhood regret, it doesn't even _matter_ if they end up staying together for the rest of their lives, but since his death his skeleton has been hanging over heavily on his shoulders. He tried hundreds of times to move on, to _forget_ , but no matter how much he looked forward he was always being dragged backwards. But this is a chance. Keith is alive, he can _save_ him.

"You're really just upset about that dumb comic book aren't you?" Keith grumbles into his shoulder, and Lance inhales his scent, trying to commit it to memory. Keith smells like winter. _What a stupid thing to smell like_ , he thinks, almost out of childish vindictive. "It's okay. Stupid Lance."

"I'm _not_ ," he hisses back, finally pulling back a bit to rub at his nose.

_How embarrassing I'm 27 and I just held a 10 year old and cried my heart out..._

"But," Lance feels it suddenly a pull that drags him back into reality as Keith looks at him almost curiously, "You know if you died," the words really do choke him and Keith blinks, "I would save you. No matter what, too."

"I don't _need_ to be saved by you," huffs Keith, letting go of Lance completely, turning to look out the window. The glow of winter surrounds him in a soft light, the darkness of the sky creeping in through the ends of the world, it almost seems.

It almost looks as though Keith is going to be pulled away by the light, the Heaven's halo dragging him back to where he belongs amongst the dead.

Lance reaches out for his hand.

"Stupid," he says back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 16th.

Tomorrow is the day Keith get's kidnapped. Lance circles the date five times, his brother watching him almost curiously. He'll ask Keith to sleepover tonight, and they'll spend all day inside and in Lance's room. Keith _will_ live. Changing the past consequences be fucking _damned_ ; Keith will live. He will. He will make sure of it. Keith and him hold hands on the way to school, and Lance tells him about the cartoon him and Hunk were watching last night—very kid like, he determined on this particular subject path—and Keith listens quietly with small quips at Lance, but overall a peaceful morning.

"Sleepover this weekend," Lance says, tugging Keith backwards just as they're about to cross over and into the school. The girls behind them shoot them an annoyed look at them suddenly stopping, but Lance really could care less. This is utmost importance.

"Sure?" Keith says, tugging Lance forward a bit. "But your mom doesn't _like_ us having sleepovers."

 _What_?

Keith huffs, his nose red and his breath puffing out into small clouds before dispersing quickly. Lance traces the sign of life, watches how Keith's lungs _inhale_ then _exhale_ , and Keith sighs, cheeks getting slightly warmer. "She _saw_ us kissing before, remember? Sleepovers were banned."

 _What kind of horny ten year olds were we_... Lance thinks idly. "Oh." He blushes, vaguely remembering that story his mom had probably told him four-million times about catching her son and her dead-ex-boyfriend _kissing_. (The indecency!) Lance honestly has gotten to the point in his life where he blanks out the words 'Keith', a coping mechanism, of some sorts. He's sure. "I'll talk to her."

Keith blinks. Head tilting ever so slightly, "You talk like an adult."

Lance jerks back, face tightening before he smiles at Keith as innocently as he can manage. _Because I am an adult_ , he wants to say, but that'd just be redundant at some point. Would that even make sense? Is the bigger issue, so he just manages to laugh it off, scratching at the back of his head sheepishly. "Is that so?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Can Keith sleepover?"

"No," she says, back turned to them as she continues washing the dishes. His little brother is screaming and clutched tightly around her left leg, crying and sniffling and Lance doesn't care enough at this point to ask _why_ his little brother is crying bloody murder. He finds, at this age, it's more believable if he just ignores his siblings. Keith shuffles awkwardly behind him, their hands still held within each other.

"We'll even sleep in _your_ room!"

She blinks owlishly at that, "Lance what is going on?"

"Keith _needs_ to sleepover, mom." Lance tries for desperately, he hadn't thought his ten year old self had _already_ managed to get his kid-boyfriend banned from sleepovers. Doesn't that happen later in life? When they're both, oh he doesn't know, _fucking_. She frowns at him pointedly.

"He does not _need_ to sleepover, you can see him tomorrow."

"No!" Lance hisses back, feeling the urge to stomp his foot like a child. "I'll do anything, please mom."

"It's suspicious that you want this so badly," she says carefully, as though trying to understand Lance's ulterior motives for this. But how could she understand that it's to keep Keith from being _murdered_. He wonders, if worst comes to it, if he'll have to convince his mom of the truth. He can only imagine how well that'd go. "Fine," she finally concedes and Lance perks upwards, "But your brother's have to stay in the room and if I find out any hanky-panky was going on you'll be grounded for _weeks_ , you hear me?"

"No hanky-panky, got it." Lance salutes, relaxing into holding hands with Keith immediately. _I wouldn't want to have hanky-panky with a ten year old, anyways_. He still isn't quite sure where the moral white and black area lays in a situation like this. Kissing is fine, right? Kids kiss adults all the time, that isn't _wrong_. There's no tongue, it's just honest pure peck the lips quickly type of kissing. And he highly doubts Keith really even knows what hanky-panky is aside from kissing. So they're good, nothing to worry about. No dead Keith, no kidnapping, and most of all, no murder. He's effectively _saved_ Keith.

They end back up at Keith's house to tell his parents (Keith and him stop holding hands when they're near his house, Lance realizes, as though the social rule was built between the two of them but he doesn't peculiarly remember it) and his mother eyes them long and hard before agreeing, Keith packing some clothes and a toothbrush before they're back in Lance's house. Lance is on high-alert the entire time they're walking back home, from all the TV shows and books he's ever read the future never changes easily, or on the other hand a small tiny detail changes everything.

Butterfly effect or no butterfly effect, he's placing bets in hopes that a small change will change everything as a whole.

"So why _did_ you want me to sleepover?" Keith asks, laying out the blankets Lance's mom got for them carefully across the bed. Lance working on the air mattress for his over enthusiastic brother to sleep in. Why is it that younger siblings always want to be involved? He doesn't understand. His siblings _now_ don't even want to talk to him for more than 10 minutes at a time. Lance looks over his shoulder just slightly, his mom agreed to let them share a bed, a part him knowing that she understands that they _shouldn't_ yet understand sex, and that his younger brother's in the room should deter any kissing, but the reluctance on her face had been funny.

"Cause," _why_ is easy to answer, but to answer the question in the form of not allowing himself to reveal the truth is a bit more difficult, he thinks back to his previous issue, "I didn't want to miss you this weekend. Plus, my birthday is soon."

Keith goes red, chin trembling before he slaps Lance over the head with a pillow. "You're so gross!"

Lance laughs openly, feeling truly relieved.

 _Keith will live_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He watches the clock tick steadily into the midnight, watching Keith sleep beside him and carefully listening for any noises. The future could easily change, maybe the kidnapper _knows_ where Lance lives too, maybe he'll come for both of them. The future could easily change and he might not exactly know how it'll go, these are the worries that keep his eyes open, watching Keith breathe in order to calm himself down. It's not till 43 minutes into 1 AM does he finally give into sleep.

He wakes up almost in a flurry of panic, scared that as he reaches out Keith will be gone, but his eyes shoot open and Keith's arm is still sprawled over his chest.

Lance exhales.

They spend until Sunday evening coped up inside (Lance effectively blocking any attempts to go play outside) playing games, watching TV or movies, playing with Lance's younger siblings. Keith doesn't particularly complain, and Lance is satisfied with the results. He walks Keith home, watches as the lock on his front door turns and clicks into place, and skips himself home merrily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he wakes up Monday he's almost expecting to wake up in the present tense.

But he doesn't.

It's eerie, he thought he changed the past so why is he _reliving_ it? His mom is humming softly as she makes breakfast, his dad kissing her goodbye and wishing her a good day at work, and Lance's youngest brother had managed to crawl into his bed and cuddle him all night. But, _but_ , shouldn't he go back? He fixed the problem, he changed the future. A sudden fear that maybe he _has_ to relive his entire life, that this was the sacrifice to saving Keith. He crawls out of bed, careful not to disturb his younger brother, his mom giving him breakfast and he eats it slowly and carefully.

At 7:43 his mom says, "How strange, Keith isn't usually this late..."

There's a sudden _feeling_. He really doesn't know how to describe it; just the feeling of something truly bad caught in his throat, that he _knows_ that something bad had happened. He had assumed if he got past the kidnapping day Keith would be fine, but what if that's not the case, what if—

His mom makes him walk to school alone, but he ends up heading down the path Keith takes to get to his house. He feels almost irrational, even Keith probably has days where he sleeps in, or maybe he caught a cold from one of his snot-nosed brothers, but as Lance ends up at the end of the street to get to Keith's house there's a flurry of people.

The sounds of the ambulance and police cars screech through the streets, loud and like an echo that lulls Lance back to sleep.

 _I didn't save him_ , he thinks, _I couldn't save him_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He blinks five times.

 _"He's dead! He's_ dead!" 

He blinks at the sound of rushing water from his kitchen sink.

Why does hear the sink? Wasn't he just out on the street, watching the scene of Keith dying, thrown against the trash like a lifeless doll, _again_? He rolls over, squirming uncomfortably as his shirt rides up over his stomach, before noticing somebody's small feet are pressed against his calves. He sits up immediately, a knee-jerk reaction, looking down to much smaller versions of his brother's plastered on each side of his body.

 _This,_ Lance thinks, gulping thickly as he feels an odd sense of deja-vu, _Didn't I already see this_?

"Lance, wake up!" His mother calls in exact tune as his alarm clock goes off. He slides out of bed in a hurry, door creaking loudly behind him.

"Boys time to—" She smiles to him a soft way, and Lance feels his throat clog up, "Your awake? How rare."

"Mom—"

"Come on, time to get breakfast. Keith will be picking you up any moment now, you know? Hurry up."

He whips his head to look at the calendar, and he's met with the exact same picture and numbers as he had saw the first time.

November 13th.

The day repeats in the exact same fashion. November 13th; he's reliving November 13th. Keith and him walk hand-in-hand to school, Keith calls him weird, Hunk says that's normal and the entire day is an exact repeat. Lance openly tries to say something different, but is met with the exact same response he would've gotten the first time. It's then he understands that it isn't specific that Keith is _supposed_ to die that day:

He's just supposed to die.

 

 

 


	2. Death Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i feel like this fic is more like a novel to me than a fanfic LMAO 
> 
> also note inspired by the anime 'Erased' because that anime fucking moved me. The plot is a lot different, but similar in like the vague idea.

 

 

 

"You're being weird," Pidge says, head tilted sideways, eyes searching for _something_.

Lance hopes she doesn't find that something. Pidge has always been too smart, even the Pidge currently is _too_ smart. She always see's too much or too little, and Lance is hoping that this is one of those moments where she's unable to process anything. Belatedly, Lance realizes this conversation, these movements, are different. He hadn't relived this part. He glances at the clock, after school: in the first run Keith had sent Hunk and Pidge forward and decided to speak to him alone. _I just lost my reason to keep Keith trapped in my house all weekend_ , he realizes, almost in shock. Slowly, he swallows. "Weird?"

"Yeah," Pidge says, slowly, unsure of where she's attempting to go with her argument, " _Weird_."

Why is it different? He didn't do anything different, the exact same words, the exact same conversations. What did he do to _change_ it? Was he more distant towards Keith this time around? He can't help it. For a second time he's had to see Keith pink-lips, mouth agape and eyes closed, a serene body of somebody too young too die placed amongst the trash. First time a river, now the trash.

_His killer doesn't think much of him._

More importantly, how had the killer _known_ that Keith would come back? Did he wait for Keith when he wasn't originally where he was supposed to be? His head hurts, and apparently it shows, because Pidge leans down, cherry-pop red lips opening slightly, head tilted to the side, a ribbon tying back the right side of her hair. Lance pauses, realization washing over him so suddenly. "Do you like dresses?"

Pidge leans back, face crumbling in confusion. "I do, why?"

Pidge had told them—when they had begun worrying over each other excessively, ' _why, why aren't you dressing up anymore_?' Pidge had just shrugged it off, claimed that she didn't even _like_ wearing dresses, Lance hadn't understood, he never did—he knows that Pidge was never really a 'girly-girl' even when she dressed up nicely, but seeing it like this, in the moment, he feels as though maybe Keith's death didn't just take something away from _him_.

"Then, do you like Keith?"

"Huh?" Pidge exclaims, face going red. "Wha—what correlation do those two things have—"

"I do." Lance says, feeling a weird urge of needing to _sob_ bubbling up in his throat. It hits him suddenly, then and there: he had let Keith die for a second time. He had let Keith get _murdered_ and had happily skipped away, thinking conceitedly that he had mystically saved the entire goddamn human race and—he can't stop it, his hand flies over his mouth and he pushes down the urge to scream, instead allowing himself to curl into himself, shoulders shaking violently as he sobs, and sobs, and _sobs_. "I just—" he blabbers nonsensically, "He—Keith—"

"Lance?"

He hears a blur of people talking over him, some yelling and more yelling back before his face is being yanked upwards, Keith's face in front of him, nose-to-nose. "Lance? What's wrong? Lance?"

Keith's eyes are open, his lips aren't pale pink, his head isn't lolled onto his shoulder lifelessly. Keith is _alive_. He has to keep it that way. Not just for him, not just for Pidge, but for _Keith_. He can't let his boyfriend be tossed aside like a piece of trash, Keith has to live a long happy life, whether or not Lance is involved in it. Keith doesn't deserve to die so early, so _young_.

"He just started sobbing after he said he liked you," Pidge hurries to add in, "Did you break up with him?"

"What? Of course I didn't!" Keith hisses back, turning his attention back onto Lance. "I'll go get a teacher—"

"No." Lance says, his voice falling back into place, his crying stopping abruptly. He was given a third chance to save Keith. He can't waste it on sentiments like this. He rubs his eyes stubbornly, frowning when his vision blurs from tears. Keith frowns at him, lips pulled downwards in an odd look of worry, and Lance doesn't blame their looks of distraught, what he just did wasn't just _crying_ , it was outright sobbing, the type of crying that only happens during true grief. A loud, exclamation of it which can no longer be contained. "Do you know where Hunk is?"

"Hunk?" Pidge asks, warily looking to Keith, "Why?"

"Nothing," Lance says, slowly placing his hands over Keith's—that're still keeping his face in place, watching Lance's expression as though he's waiting for him to slip up again—softly holding them. "I just need to borrow his comic book again."

"The time travelling one?" Keith asks, frowning. "Is this why you're so upset?"

Lance's heart thuds dully.

"Honestly, you're so stupid."

 _A_ _relapse_ , he thinks, feeling suddenly drained, he had played out different motions but in the end the grand scheme he's playing back into the exact same deck of cards. _No_ , Lance realizes with a sinking heart, he's being dealed the same cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day he tries to violently switch the future.

In the middle of class he stands on his desk and begins to scream. Allura, the teacher he had long forgotten with the wade of time, had rushed to him worriedly, Keith and Pidge scattering around him as though they _expected_ this sort of collapse in his behaviour. He decides to test how far he needs to change his behaviour in order to change an event, lunch is next period and he knows what conversations are going to happen, so he needs to see if they change from this. He kicks and screams the entire way he's dragged to the nurses office.

He stops screaming as soon as he's there.

"Lance?" The school nurse says, glancing at him as Lance paces back and forth between the three beds lined against the right side of the wall. _Ignore him_ , Lance decides as he continues pacing. Then pauses, realizing that in order to see if his actions _had_ changed any conversations he needs to go back to the classroom eventually, and obediently finds himself sitting down across from the nurse. Cautiously, he offers Lance a sucker. "Would you like to talk about what's bothering you?"

"Yes." Lance says, what should he say? Draw concern to Keith? "I keep seeing somebody dangerous around Keith, lately."

"Somebody dangerous?"

"Yes. I decided I would only be taken seriously if I lashed out like this." _Because adults never want to believe children unless the children are having a breakdown._ He knows this mostly because he _himself_ is an adult. The school nurse just looks mistrustful to this information, and Lance realizes that _maybe_ he's acting too much on the assumption of how 'adults' will react. This is a school, adults that had to become adjusted to how _kids_ think.

"Do you know who's the dangerous person?"

He shakes his head vigorously like a wet dog, childish and quick, before he looks down to his hands, purposefully twiddling his thumbs. "He was scary."

"I see," he says simply, patting Lance's head, and Lance feels disconnected as the teacher says quietly, "Well if you see anything else, let me know right away, okay?"

 _He didn't believe me_.

Lance is sent back to class dragging his feet, toes hitting against the front of his sneakers as he stares blankly at nothing. He couldn't get an adult to believe in him. _Who else can I talk to? Allura?_ He hesitates, opening the classroom door and he's met with tiny little eyes staring at him in open wonder.

He sighs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Back off!" Keith snaps at the third person that's attempted to approach Lance on _why_ exactly he started screaming in the middle of the class. He doesn't mind, it's nice to see his plan unfurling in such a great way. He's managed to change the future, even if it's only a _tiny_ bit. It's still annoying though, children are too honest. He wonders, if at some point, he was like this as well.

Hunk doesn't ask anything, the same gentle-quietness he holds even in his adult years extending over the conversation even now.

Lance zones out, feeling himself disconnecting from the scene in front of him. Keith arguing with some girl in their class, the school nurse telling their teacher Allura something—definitely not anything Lance wants Allura to know—and she looks to Lance in a stance of nervousness and worry. _She's a good teacher_ , Lance can't help but think.

"—I want to be a hero like him."

Pidge sighs, "That stupid manga again?"

Lance's shoulders square, jaw tightening and it happens so quickly, the same exact words being repeated, said in the same tones, the same drawls, the same—

"I would go back in time to save Lance if I was the hero," Keith puffs out his chest proudly, looking to Lance with a small all-knowing smile.

Lance can't return it.

Lance leans over into himself, hand firmly clamping over his mouth as he vomits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"We're worried about his mental health lately," Allura says, her voice sounds like a distant melody.

He's changing small actions, but the conversations still always end up the same. The actions mean nothing if the words aren't catching up with them. _It isn't just the words, soon the actions will catch up and_ —Keith's hand squeezes his, gentle and reassuring.

"Keith mentioned Lance randomly broke out sobbing, then when he got back from the nurses office he puked into his hand during lunch." Allura lists, and Lance wonders if his mom is going to ask ' _spaghetti or curry?_ ' for what he wants for dinner when they get home. Keith will still come home with him, eat dinner with his family, then Lance and his mom and his dumb siblings will walk Keith home because it's _late_ and the next day will repeat. "Do you know if Lance is possibly being abused?"

His mother's reply is muffled from the other side of the wall, and Keith's grip tightens. "You'd tell me if anyone was bullying you."

Lance can only nod mutely.

Suddenly it clicks. He isn't acting out in order to _change the future_ : blearily, he remembers, he had acted these exact motions out after Keith died. For months he'd randomly break out crying or start puking. He had acted this way when he had finally come to the conclusion that Keith was dead. Lifeless, pale and dead. He let's out a shuddering sigh, glancing side-ways to Keith frowning.

"Keith, can I tell you a secret?"

Keith blinks, nodding immediately, "Go ahead."

"If," how he's going to make this sound convincing to a child, he has no idea, but he has to _try_ , "Let's say we're really in that comic book. And, it's you that dies and I go back to save you, but no matter what I'm doing the future keeps being the exact same and I don't _know_ how to save you. But I want to and—"

"I wouldn't want you to." Keith says, and Lance recoils at the soberness of Keith's voice. A sudden edge of adult-ness creeping over his shoulders and smacking onto his lips. Keith's eyes are older, distantly staring in place he can no longer grasp. And Lance can feel a hallow beat of his heart whispering ' _this is not a child you are looking at_ '. "The hero dies in exchange to save her. Remember?"

"But—"

"I'd rather you live over me."

 

 

 

 

 

His mom does end up asking if he wants spaghetti or curry.

Lance lashes out when his mom tries to send Keith back home, though, not because he thinks Keith will be killed today but because he honestly doesn't want to be apart from Keith. Maybe, in a sick form of regret, he wants to be comforted by the only person he's ever truly let down. Lance's mom frowns, lips curling downwards and eyebrows furrowing and he feels bad for really making her worry, but it's a necessity, she'll be even more worried about his health after Keith dies. She takes care of calling Keith's mom—Lance eavesdrops from the bathroom, listening to his mom's voice crack and beg Keith's mom ' _Lance seems to be having a really hard time, I think it'd be good for him to have Keith around'_ —and Keith curls into his side as they sleep, hand in hand.

Around 2 AM he finally decides to start planning. He drags out his brother's notebook, slapping it onto his desk with new found determination as he sneaks a pen out from the kitchen drawer and sits down, the looming feeling of a blank piece of paper hitting him so suddenly.

" _Think_ ," he mutters quietly to himself.

First, he writes down: _Why am I here?_ Only one thought follows it, to save Keith. But that can't be _all_ there is to this situation if he was _just_ saving Keith. It wouldn't be this difficult to save Keith's life if the world was conspiring to help Lance. Lance decides to write Keith's name in the middle, pointing a downwards arrow to the following word that he's just simply come to associate with Keith over years of coping.

Murdered.

Why? Why is Keith _specifically_ , Keith, murdered? He's strangled and when he was eighteen and still torn he had spent hours pouring into the case trying to make sense of it. The cops had said it was emotion fueled, strangulation is the most 'personal' way to kill somebody. But there was no prints, suggesting that the criminal had planned beforehand and had worn gloves. To Lance this makes sense, if he's changing the dates but Keith is _still_ getting murdered that has to mean he's on some specified hit-list. The killer has decided beforehand that he's going to kill Keith, so no matter how many times Lance tries to cope Keith up into his room, the moment he's out the killer is going to be seeking for Keith again. _Personal_ had been the key word to the cops, he remembers them looming over him as child asking him repetitively if there was anyone 'suspicious' around Keith recently, that if he knows who has a grudge against Keith, ' _do any adults hate Keith_?'

How had he replied? He doesn't remember anymore.

He scribbles down ' _who hates Keith_?' beneath Keith's name and finds himself leaning backwards, neck arched as he stares at his ceiling to the littered glow-in-the-dark stickers him and Keith had put up last winter. That's right. He had almost forgotten. That winter Lance's father introduced his gay brother, explaining to his three young children what 'gay' meant and the following day Lance had confessed to Keith, inspired by the emotions. Him and Keith were playing in his room, putting the stickers onto his ceiling with the help of his oldest younger brother, both of them expressively explaining to Keith what being _gay_ means.

 _Boys can like boys_ , Lance had thought, and with that determination confessed his undying love for Keith.

(Lance remembers, six years later, his dad confessing he had blamed his brother for Lance turning gay. Lance had choked down the feeling of suffocation, because, maybe, it really was his uncle's fault. Maybe without that push of courage, Lance never would've gotten so attached to the one person that singe-handily crushed his only hope for a future. He dismissed that thought because it was stupid, "People can't turn people gay, dad.")

His dad hates Keith? No, even tonight his dad had welcomed Keith warmly and had even played with Keith. He never really thought his dad hated how he turned out, just a minuscule parental disappointment that Lance didn't turn out perfectly normal. There's Mary and Ashlyn in their class that sometimes mock Keith about his sneakers, and sometimes mock Lance for his eyebrows but he highly doubts two ten year old girls could yank Keith's body over and railing and throw him into a river.

 _Maybe somebody I've never met_.

Who? Who has he never met that's related to Keith? It's hard, wadding through his memories that should be _current_ but are centuries away. Words and faces blur into distant memories that Lance can no longer recall. He had spent so much time trying to forget about Keith, he never thought the self-saving mechanism would backfire on him in this form.

He writes the words, _Keith's mom and dad_ under the word murdered with question marks beside both their names. He's met Keith's mom a few times, in a distant don't-really-talk-to-me way. Keith's mom has never really shown interest in him or any of Keith's friends, but Lance doesn't really consider that to be motive for being a killer. Maybe it's how the killer _got_ to Keith but he highly doubts she killed her own child. He saw her at the funeral and four years after that—broken, her bones weary and creaky, she moved like a skeleton and Lance had felt harmonized by her grief—but Keith's dad on the other hand, he doesn't know about.

Keith has an older brother, adopted, Shiro. He hesitantly places Shiro's name there, mostly for the sake of a list of suspects to _begin_ searching for cause of murder. Shiro, from what he remembers, has always been gentle. With Keith, with Lance, with Pidge and with Hunk. Shiro hadn't cried at the funeral, Lance remembers standing behind him as he watched Shiro's shoulders draw backwards, face red in attempt to stop the urge to cry.

Keith's mom didn't hug him, and Lance distinctively remembers Shiro not even speaking to her.

As a child he didn't understand how family wouldn't support each other in a moment like this, but he get's it now that he's an adult. It was Keith's mom's firm rejection of accepting Shiro into her family, her real son had died, how could she take care of a non-blood relative? Not after that she couldn't. Lance pauses, frowning at Shiro's name. _I wonder where he is now_.

He sighs, leaning forwards as he taps the edge of his pen against the paper, frowning.

"I don't really have much to go on, do I..."

"Lance?"

He blinks, slapping his notebook shut and sliding it out of view to turn to his mother. She frowns at him, a peculiar tired frown, and Lance glances quickly at the clock. 5  _AM_. Not usually a time a healthy non-crazy child would be awake, but Lance can play on this. "I couldn't sleep," Lance confesses immediately. "So I was doing homework."

"I see," she hums, and Lance follows her out of his room, quietly closing the door behind himself, shooting Keith a quick look before it creaks completely shut, as he wanders into the kitchen. He hadn't wanted to come to this point, but she _is_ his mother. She's supported and believed in him even during his worst years, she helped build him from nothing after Keith's death. Even if she doesn't fully understand, Lance needs her help.

"Mom," he starts, placing himself quietly into his seat at the table as he clasps his hands into each other, trying to look older, more wise, more _tired_. "I need your opinion on something."

"Yes?" She asks, looking at him in a careful measured way. "What's wrong?"

"I think someone dangerous is following Keith." Lance says immediately. Be forward, he reminds himself. "It's just a hunch, I don't have proof. I'm trying to find who it is out, but," he pauses, how should he even phrase it? He shrivels, finally realizing he's speaking _too_ much like an adult. "I _know_ I'm right."

"A hunch, huh?"

For a second he's worried she's going to think he's going completely insane. First her child goes nuts in class then starts talking about some hypothetical dangerous man that's following Keith around, Lance is sure by tomorrow he's going to be seeing a child therapist. "You've said that once before." Lance jerks, looking at her with wide eyes. "You don't remember? Weird how you've suddenly forgot, you used to bring it up everyday so smugly."

"What are you talking about?"

"When that man tried to abduct your brother," she says, blinking at Lance, "Do you really not remember? We were shopping and suddenly you turned your head, like some creepy horror movie doll and told me in a bland voice, ' _Mom, right now someone is trying to take Victor_.' I was really freaked out, but when we got there we found some strange man trying to drag your brother into his car. It's weird. In that moment, you were acting the exact same as you were now."

Lance blinks, he _doesn't_ remember this. He doesn't even remember his little brother even ever almost being kidnapped. That's not just something someone forgets, trauma or no trauma. "This is different," Lance decides on finally, "Unless I find the dangerous person, Keith he'll..."

"So you're trying to find a dangerous man you know nothing about?" His mother asks filling in the silence Lance had left, humming quietly as she flicks on the stove and pulls out pancake mix. "Well, usually the things that're dangerous to children are either the people closest to them or a complete stranger. It depends which you think it is."

"You're talking to me like an adult," Lance realizes, he almost wants to _laugh_.

She doesn't turn around, voice muffled by the sound of sizzling, "Sometimes I think you are one. Recently."

 

 

 

 

 

November 15th, he starts with the teacher's.

There's two male teachers among the school staff, the nurse and the eighth grade teacher. After promptly asking Keith if he's close to the eighth grade teacher, to whom Keith asks 'No, why?' he mentally crosses him out. Out of an entire school of weak vulnerable children why would a random eighth grade teacher take Keith? What benefit is there, Keith is not exactly easy-access prey. Even the cops had been stumped, usually kidnappers don't exactly aim for children that have lots of friends and parents that actually somewhat care, this person had specifically chosen Keith for a _reason_.

Lance frowns, realizing in order to even begin narrowing down a list of suspects, he needs to find out the reason. More specifically the reason he was only sent _four_ days before the murder. Is the first day he resets time important?

 _Why Keith_?

Why Keith, why _Keith_? Why specifically Keith?

He glances quietly at Keith, watching how he fiddles awkwardly with his eraser before handing it over to the girl in front of him. He's already seen this scene twice in his life, probably, the first time he forgets but the second time he remembers. It feels odd to think about it in a form of 'memories' and not really 'existing' in them, that maybe this really is just a long dream, played word-by-word by memories scattered over time resurfacing to remind Lance that he can't escape. Moments like this, make him think that maybe it really is just a dream. He grips his pencil, feeling the tip of it digging into his palm and sighs.

 _It's not a dream_.

It's strange though. At some point in time he had lived these motions exactly, seventeen years ago _this_ was his life. It's strange, day-by-day everything fades away but at some point it was physical, it was _real_. Keith slowly turns to look at him, eyes flickering in realization that Lance is staring at him, before a soft smile—a smile Lance has seen twice, now—creeps on his lips, illuminated by the glow of happiness, his lips soft and red and pulled into a small heart shape.

Lance's heart plummets, just a bit.

 _I'll save you._ He can't help but think. _No matter what it takes_.

 

 

 

 

 

"Keith can I talk to you?"

Lance decides to take a proactive stance in this matter. Keith follows him, waving off the two girls that were trying to ask for help on their homework, to which Keith blandly states 'a _sk the teacher_ ', and Lance can't stop himself from wondering that if Keith grew older, would he still retain his bluntness? Would he learn to be kinder? Would everything smooth out into a different personality? He wants to know. He wants to _see_ , speak and feel an older Keith.

"Keith, I know this sounds weird but..." is it okay? He can't exactly have Keith _hating_ him, how is he supposed to help Keith if Keith promptly decides to hate him until he get's murdered. "Your dad, is he... still around?"

Keith blinks owlishly, head tilting to the side as his face wrinkles in confusion. "My dad? I don't know. Mom says he's gone. My grandpa once told me I was a mistake, I asked Pidge and she said my dad probably didn't want me. Why're you asking this suddenly?"

"Oh," Lance states awkwardly, "No reason. So he's not around?"

"Nope," Keith nods in agreement, and Lance wonders if he's dragging up wounds he's not supposed too, but Keith doesn't look upset just mildly suspicious he's bringing up his dad all of a sudden, "Mom says he's never even seen me."

Lance sighs, reluctantly striking Keith's dad off of 'potential murderers' list. There's still a _slight_ possibility, but he only has two days left and he highly doubts some random man that's never even seen Keith would go out of his way to strangle him. He had assumed Keith's dad was dead originally because he never really saw anyone stating to be Keith's father at the funeral. "Just curious, where is your dad?"

"Korea. It's faraway." Keith finalizes the conversation with a bored sigh, "Can we go eat now?"

"Oh cool," Lance says quietly, grabbing Keith's hand gratefully when Keith reaches out for him. "Sorry, for bringing it up."

"It's fine," Keith says, smiling gently as he looks over his shoulder, fingers curling around Lance's and Lance wonders why but whenever he's with Keith he feels himself finally clicking into place. A place he finally _belongs_. "We promised to tell each other everything, remember?"

"Everything." Lance repeats the words, thumb pressing into Keith's palm. _There are some things I can't tell you, I'm sorry, Keith_. He amends that one day he'll tell him, in their future, in a faraway place when Keith is safe and Lance is back into his original age, in the new time line that he'll create just for him and Keith. Even if he has to tear apart the past, he'll remake the future. "You know how you said not to save you? If I was that comic book hero."

Keith sighs, "That again?"

He squeezes his hand tightly. "I would do it. Even if you didn't want me too."

Keith doesn't look happy, Lance realizes, he sincerely looks miserable as he pulls Lance forward gently, head turning back around and Lance wishes he could see his expression in that moment as he mutters quietly, "I know you would, idiot." More loudly he adds, "When do you ever listen to what I tell you to do?"

Lance snorts.

 

 

 


	3. Death Two II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> im really glad y'all GAVE this fic a chance
> 
> i feel like this chap isn't up to quality, but i had to put it in because it's important to the overall plot of this fic. Also, imma give u a hint, never make assumptions. This chapter is going to make a lot of you draw an absolute conclusion but whatever you're thinking: youre wrong.

 

 

November 16th, 1999.

He looks at the calendar with a forlorn feeling, lips drawn into a flat line as his mother hums softly, the sound of eggs sizzling and his two little brother's arguing serving as appropriate backdrop noise, but _still_ , he only has _one_ day left to save Keith. His mother and friends are convinced he's having a mental break down, and Keith is going to die soon. He has no leads to who the killer can even be, everything is falling more out of place than it originally did. He bypasses his mother's worried look, flipping open his brother's notebook and frowning at his notes.

The date November 13th is circled five times: November 13th is when it _started_. The killer didn't just randomly choose Keith, Keith's death comes with a meaning, it's weaved into the future and stamped accordingly. November 13th is when he restarts this fucking terrible cycle and he needs to find out _why_. Why does Keith die on the 17th? Why does he die on Lance's _birthday_? Over years Lance has stopped associating his birthday as his birthday, at all, it has simply come to terms as the day Keith died. But _why_. Lance frowns, fingers shaking as he writes his own name underneath ' _Why does Keith die?'_

Is he the reason?

He never considered it, not once. Sometimes he wondered if he should have slept over at Keith's that day, or had Keith sleep over, but not once did he think that maybe it's _his_ fault Keith is originally targeted, after all, the police had thought there was no motive behind the killing. Or the motive was highly sophisticated and pin-pointed to Keith because Keith was an easy victim _for_ him specifically. Kidnapping and murdering children isn't easy, as an adult, Lance knows this. Lance's mom is always calling Keith's mom when he arrives or leaves their house, schools keep track and there isn't a lot of time between kidnapping without being noticed by somebody. Unlike when an adult goes missing, when children go missing police take it seriously from second number _one_.

_Who has easy access to Keith?_

Teachers, he lists accordingly, frowning as he writes down Shiro's name, followed by his father's. He adds his mother for extra good measure, and even his little brothers before muttering how _stupid_ that is. Shiro, though, stands out the most.

He doesn't remember a lot about Shiro, he always had a sort of professional distance between him and Keith, but Keith never seemed to actively _hate_ Shiro. Lance honestly cannot remember, it all blurs into the past and the future and he isn't sure at this point he'd even be _able_ to remember what Keith has said about Shiro in the past, if he ever has said anything that meaningful, and sighs, placing his forehead as a dark ' _thump_ ' against his notes.

"Lance, Keith is here!"

"Good morning," he hears Keith whisper softly, and Lance peeks his head around the corner feeling his chest suddenly convulsing, squeezing in the presence of Keith. Keith is dressed in the same red coat, old sneakers, smile soft and shy before Lance's mother and Lance just feels guilty. Keith is going to die because he can't _save_ him. "Where's Lance?"

"He's looking at some notebook," she says and Lance tucks it into his backpack and slides out of the room just as he hears the stove being turned off.

"Morning" Lance mutters, placing his backpack on the back of the chair before sliding himself into his seat, head tilting slightly at Keith, "Aren't you early?"

It's a theoretical question, he _knows_ why Keith is early, his mom asked him to be because she's worried about his current mental health and Keith had confessed that he was too. ' _I need you to keep a close eye on him, Keith'_ she had whispered into the phone, cupping the bottom as Lance had pressed his ear against his bedroom door whilst simultaneously hissing at his brother's to be _quiet_.

"I woke up early," Keith says awkwardly placing himself into the opposing seat to Lance, "What were you doing?"

"Reading something," Lance says quickly, thanking his mom when she places his breakfast in front of him, "Hey Keith, what's your brother like?"

Keith blinks. "First my dad and now Shiro?"

Lance pauses mid-bite, looking up at Keith with an unreadable expression. He didn't think Keith would catch on to him digging into his personal life so quickly, actually, he was hoping that Keith _wouldn't_ catch on. "Yeah." Lance tries for, frowning. "I just don't know much about you, and Pidge says boyfriends should know _everything_."

"What are you talking about," Keith snorts, face becoming half-flushed and Lance shoots his mom and embarrassed look when she hiccups a stifled giggle. "You've _met_ Shiro before. He's the best."

"Hobbies?"

"Shiro's? He makes robot stuff."

"Anything mildly concerning about his behaviour?" Lance presses, trying to aim for nonchalant as he shoves half a piece of toast into his mouth. Keith glowers.

"Lance sweety that wasn't very nice," his mom intervenes immediately and Lance sighs, putting down his fork and pressing his cheek into the table, glancing to the side. _So I've met Shiro before the funeral? I barely even remember what he looks like_... no that's untrue, he blinks, watching as the snow falls, soft and slowly, behind the window, eyes widening. He _did_ meet Shiro once before, before Keith and him were dating, a long, long time ago, when they were still small and shy around each other.

' _This is my big brother_ ,' Keith had smiled, missing three front-teeth and beaming as though he was showing the newest, limited edition toy, and Lance had found Shiro terrifying. Shiro was large, scowled awkwardly and had a big gash across the middle of his face. He almost forgot. He remembered hearing about it, in passing as adults thought they were secretly whispering, that Shiro was badly abused before Keith's family took him in. Shiro was scary though. He remembers once seeing Shiro beating a kid up in the playground, having covered up Keith's eyes and exclaimed loudly:

' _Let's go get candy_!'

Because Keith hero-worshiped Shiro, but Shiro wasn't exactly what Lance saw a 'great guy'. But the Shiro he remembers from the funeral was subdued, smiled kindly and was soft in tone and body language. Was it just child fear that propelled him to think all this about Shiro? Or was Shiro really like that in his memories?

"—Lance," Lance blinks, head coming up as his mother is sitting on her knee's, gripping his face. Lance, eerily, realizes that she seems _scared_. "Lance, honey?"

"Oh." He says, frowning and trying to recollect the information he was just thinking about. "What's wrong?"

"You just went unresponsive for like 10 minutes! You stupid dumbass!"

"I was trying to remember something," Lance yawns, shaking off his mom's hands and glancing to Keith, searching for the answers. Who was Shiro, who was he _really_? "Something from a long, long time ago."

"You're not that old, honey." His mother says, gently pushing his hair back and Lance really does wonder how his mom plans to afford psychiatric care after Keith dies for him. How had she did it before? If he's right his mom will be pregnant with his baby sister soon and Lance will be having mental break downs until he's well into his teen years. His family isn't exactly rich, and until this moment, he's never really put much thought into it.

"I was trying to remember Shiro," he admits grabbing the last piece of toast off of his plate and frowning at his egg, "I never liked him. He scared me."

"Everybody says that," Keith huffs, flopping back down into his chair. "Shiro is a big _baby_."

 _A big baby_? Lance thinks, frowning into nothingness. _Would a big baby not cry a single tear at his little brother's funeral_?

"Lance," his mother implores softly, "Do you want Keith to sleep over this weekend?"

"Yeah." Lance says immediately, smiling as easily as he can and hopes that it reaches his eyes. _An alternative route_. "Thanks, mom."

 

 

 

 

 

 

"What happened Sunday anyway," Lance decides on casual probing. He was with Keith most of Monday, he highly doubts the important life-changing event that triggered Keith getting murdered happens when Lance _isn't_ around—if his suspicions are correct and he's the reason Keith get's murdered in the first place—something _must_ have happened. Or were the police right and it was completely random?

Keith slides his gloved hand into Lance's, nose burrowing into his scarf as he watches Lance pull the gate closed as they're leaving. "Sunday?" Keith says, kicking a bit of snow and Lance wonders why these specific days always feel like some sort of hazy dream; always light snow, clear skies and Keith always glows under the sun in a dream like way. Lance feels the same first worry he was plagued with when he first arrived, _is this really reality_? "Nothing really. Oh, I told my brother we were dating, and he promised to keep it a secret from mom."

Lance's heart thuds dully.

"Oh," Lance exhales, a puff a smoke leaving his lips before curling into clouds and disappearing like a storm. Keith's gaze lingers on him, searching and quiet, and Lance looks down to their hands, frowning.

 _Shiro_. Shiro, if he remembers, was the primary concern of questioning when the police were talking to Lance. They asked him questions ranging to who Keith was when he was with him, to questions that ranged straight to ' _do you know anyone dangerous around Keith_?' Adult males surrounding Keith would be subject to first look. It just makes sense. It also makes sense that the police probably looked right into the adopted scar-across-his-face brother with a history of being hit and hitting. Wouldn't their family point fingers at Shiro easily if there was any possible way he could've done it?

"Lance?"

Lance blinks, focusing re-zoning onto Keith and Pidge—who he didn't realize even _came_ —before smiling as easily as he can. "What are you thinking so hard about?" Pidge asks this time, big eyes flickering in uncertainty. Trying to piece a separate puzzle together, probably. He wishes he could enlist Pidge into helping him, it would probably be all so clear before Pidge's eyes and Lance suddenly freezes.

"Why can't I?"

"What?" Keith demands, brows furrowing in confusion.

"Pidge, can I talk to you? Privately." Pidge looks quickly between Keith and Lance, before apparently finding her ' _go ahead_ ' from Keith and nodding hesitantly. For some reason he was deluded into thinking he had to do this _alone_. But why? Pidge and Hunk were affected by Keith's death almost as much as he was. Pidge trails quietly behind him, and Lance rounds to a more secluded part of the play ground before turning to look at Pidge. "Keith is going to be murdered tomorrow."

"What?" Pidge says, looking suddenly startled, and if the situation wasn't about Keith being murdered Lance might've used it as the only time he's had a one-up on Pidge. But it doesn't leave an euphoric feeling, just a sour one. "Lance what are you talking about?"

"Pidge I know this sounds crazy but I need you to play along with me. Okay? The first time he's drowned, the second time he's just _thrown out_ like trash—like—like Keith meant _nothing_. I've checked into his family, because you know, family members or close adults are more likely to commit it, and his dad is in another country which leaves Shiro but I feel like the police, in the future, already looked into Shiro so it seems kind of stupid to me to narrow down on him? You know? I only have another day."

Pidge pauses, her boots scuffing gently across the top surface of the snow. Pidge always looks so round in her winter clothes, even as an adult. Puffy and warm. But at this moment she looks cold, her cheeks not frozen red but an ashen colour as her eyes remain curiously circled. Finally, she blinks. "The other suspects?"

"I don't know, I added the two male teachers closest to Keith and my dad."

"And your certain it's a male?"

"Yeah, foot prints in the first crime scene were male." Lance says, pressing his thumb gently into his temple in order to recall any repressed details about Keith's original case. That's the one he should focus on, isn't it? The first time Keith died. The _intended_ way.

"Why did the motive change?" Pidge asks, face becoming scrunched up. "You—did you alter something?"

"Yeah. I made him sleepover. Originally he didn't."

"Okay," Pidge whispers slowly, "So you went... back in time to stop Keith from being... hurt... But even when you altered something Keith still died. So your hypothesis is isn't that you're here to stop Keith from dying but to catch the killer?"

"Hypothesis," Lance mutters in a soft laugh, feeling suddenly absurd. He's discussing a serious crime with a _ten year old girl_. Maybe he really is going crazy, that he'll wake up drugged and strapped down to a table with people with soft voices whispering to him that he needs to wake up, because where he currently is, isn't reality. "You sure do say a lot of fancy words for your age, Pidge. I guess your IQ has always been high."

"I'm going to disregard that statement and focus on the more important things than you time skipping," Pidge snaps back, "So why are you asking _me_?"

"I need your help. I'm stupid. How am I supposed to figure it out?"

" _You_ , not me, went back in time." Pidge points out, finger suddenly jabbing in Lance's direction. "So either _you're_ the cause of the murder, or the only one that can stop it. So let's consider for two seconds that you're the cause, why? How?"

 _The cause._ He wants to laugh, he really does. A dry forced laughter that strangles his throat. He had entertained the idea briefly, but hearing Pidge point it out so _obviously_ makes him feel choked. Of course he's the reason. Why else would Keith's death be so central to him, he _knows_ this. "I don't know," Lance whispers in response, shrinking before Pidge. "Because we're dating? But who would kill Keith over us _dating_?"

"Maybe," Pidge says softly, and Lance feels the world suddenly opening up and swallowing him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He does it during dinner.

"Keith, I'm breaking up with you." His mother quirks up curiously, big doe eyes blinking as though she's just heard something completely _absurd_. And it is absurd, even now, Lance had never even let the thought of breaking up with Keith enter his head. Arguably, his only happiest moments were with Keith. His entire life rotating and circling around Keith as though he was _made_ for Keith. Keith blinks, fork pausing.

"What?" Keith asks.

"Yeah," Lance swallows, glancing to his dad who's frowning as though something strange really has happened. Lance's family has been nothing but supportive when it comes to him and Keith, their classmates, their teachers, everyone around them had always just _accepted_ him and Keith. But that can't be true, he knows this now, because if Keith _was_ killed because of him, then it has to be because of their relationship. There's nothing else wrong with Keith aside from who Lance is to him. "I decided," decided what? That a life with Keith alive is better than him dead? "I like girls more."

"Lance—" Keith starts, looking around the table before pausing, "Can we do this _after_?"

"No." Lance says, feeling particularly harsh. "I don't want to date you anymore."

Keith looks hurt, of course he does, and Lance has to shrug off the feeling of reaching out and grabbing Keith's hand to comfort him. He's doing this to protect Keith. He'll relive every goddamn moment of his life if it means protecting Keith, even if Keith isn't _in_ his life anymore. As long as Keith is alive. That's all he needs, it really is. Keith slowly places down his fork, looking at Lance in a squinted way.

"Is this about Pidge?"

"Pidge?" Lance balks, suddenly really confused. "What about Pidge?"

Keith places down his cutlery, glancing sideways at the clock and Lance feels a sinking feeling. _Something is off_ , Lance can't help but think, his fingers shaking as he tries to calm himself. His mother's voice is blurry, unattainable, and he tries to reach for it over the storm roaring in his ear drums. "I'm going to go," Keith says softly, looking to Lance's dad before turning his body, "I'll see you at school, Lance."

"Keith—" Lance tries for, voice dipping into an unattainable syllable, and Keith glances back at him, steps light and ghostly as he crosses Lance's dining room floor.

 _Something is wrong_.

"Good choice, son." His dad says, and Lance whips his head around with wide-eyes to look at his dad as his mother hisses ' _honey_!' venomously. Lance stands up abruptly, feeling absolutely _sick_ with himself, and begins running after Keith as though _possessed_. He doesn't know anything, he's just making assumptions, what if even if he breaks up with Keith, Keith is still murdered? What if it isn't about _them_ but about _him_? He can feel cuts cutting against the soles of his feet, but he can't stop, he can't.

What if this is the last time he ever get's a chance at saving Keith? What if he _fails_?

He stops, looming over the river bank and glances down to where Keith is hanging. Lance's heart stops.

" _Lance_ ," Keith says, his voice cutting and deep and Lance recoils as though he's been slapped.

 _Lance_?

 _Why isn't he waking up_?

"What the—"

It all blurs. Lines fade into deep circles of red and black, blurring before his blinking eyes like direct sunlight. Suddenly everything is blurring into a white noise, Keith smiling gently before him as he hangs from a noose from the tree by the river. Pidge yells at him and blames him, screams that Lance could've done _anything_ , that Lance could've stayed with Keith. Hunk is quiet, holding Lance's hand tightly.

" _A 10 year old boy tried committing suicide like this?"_

" _Isn't that impossible?"_

Keith died.

Keith _died_.

"Lance!" He blinks, eyes refocusing and zoning in onto Pidge's face. "Oh good, you're awake."

Blearily he raises his hand up, fingers stretching, chubby and small, before his face. His arm is attached to multiple IVs and Lance can't conjure what happened anymore. It all seems like a distant memory, like something that flashes before him but he can't _grab_. "Kei—"

"You saved him." Pidge says, reaching out for the button to call the nurse. Her lips a gently peach colour as she frowns at Lance. "This time he wasn't murdered, but tried killing himself."

"He what?"

"Seems impossible, doesn't it?" Pidge hums back, sighing as she plops back down onto her chair, eyebrows furrowed together in a way of thinking. "A ten year old boy tried to commit suicide because his boyfriend dumped him. Doesn't sound like Keith to me."

"Doesn't sound like a child thing to do," Lance murmurs back.

Pidge side-eyes him, "You would know."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 18th, 1999.

Keith isn't dead yet, not yet, Lance reassures himself as he sits at Keith's beside holding his hand as tightly as he can muster. He broke two fingers trying to tear apart the rope that was tied around Keith's neck, Lance doesn't remember much, and the child therapist he was forced into seeing had whispered to his parents that it is most likely Lance faced something called 'disassociation' in order to move quickly enough to save Keith, his brain had went on automatic.

Keith hasn't spoken to him. He refuses too.

"I just wanted to keep you safe." Lance mutters, for the fifth time. "I thought us dating was putting you in danger."

When he's met with silence, again, Lance sighs, leaning backwards into his chair as he glares childishly at the books and toys Pidge and Hunk had brought for Keith yesterday, and how Lance had stood on the outside of the door as he listened to them giggle and chat amongst themselves. He had felt excluded to the utmost degree, and had shoved away he feeling completely.

"Your birthday was yesterday," Keith says suddenly, glossy eyes staring faraway and Lance wants to pluck them out, rub them dry with a towel and place them back in. "Happy birthday." Lance blinks, watching how Keith curls forward, voice gasping in painful breathes, "Happy birthday."

"Keith—"

"Lance," Keith says, fingers gripping into his almost painfully, "I'm fine. Your fine. This isn't your fault."

"What do you mean?"

"This is just a dream," Keith says leaning over the bed and placing his free hand over his eyes and Lance frowns, confused. "Lance, you need to wake up."

"Keith?"

"How could Keith hang himself 7ft up without a ladder?" Pidge's voice cuts in, mature and losing the quality of childishness that Lance has begun to seemingly find normal. Her normal voice. Lance blinks, and suddenly he's standing in front of the tree Keith had hung himself from, the rope tantalizingly dangling from where Keith's neck should be. Lance turns to Pidge, her arms crossed as she shakes her head. "How could you, a _child_ barely 4ft tall, pry Keith's body out of that rope?"

"He was at my house right before—"

"Think, Lance. What actually happened?" She cuts in, tone sober. 

He closes his eyes, exhaling frustratingly, he remembers running after Keith after his dad had made that comment knowing _something_ was off, and then he ran into—he ran into someone. Who? He asked for their help, but they—

"Shiro," Lance exhales, eyes widening, "Shiro was leaving the bank, oh _god_ , Pidge—"

He blinks at the sound of rushing water from his kitchen sink.

He turns over, bed sheets pooling off his waist and he stares down at himself. He realizes, in a single moment, that he's failed again. Keith has died  _again_. He pauses, hands shakily coming up to cover his eyes as he screams into his room, his younger brother's startling beside him.

"Lance, wake up!" His mother calls in exact tune as his alarm clock goes off.

 

 


	4. Death Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> long time no update (honestly I got sucked into bnha like a lifeless fish) but the third season of voltron is coming out, so out of excitement I wrote another chapter for this fic
> 
> i tbh, love this fic

 

 

Even if he tries to change the future, it all comes full circle. Different motions, but the same end.

He sits emptily in his school seat, trying to process the words floating before his eyes.  _Hanged, Keith_ followed by the ominous name of  _Shiro_  circled four times. He  _saw_  Shiro leaving the riverbank, he really did. But that doesn't mean anything in the name of the law especially when it occurred past-tense and in a different time line. He needs concrete proof if he's going to save Keith, he  _needs_  to get Shiro caught.

He opens his mouth to tell his mom he needs help and he blinks and—

"Today's news," Lance blinks up at his ceiling.  _Ceiling_. His ceiling, his apartment ceiling. It feels weird, to think he woke up from a dream; every moment lately feels like a long, long dream. The ceiling he's stared at for hours and contemplated his life, where he's going, where it all meets a final dead end. He rolls onto his side, half expecting his two brothers to be plastered on each side like how he's woken up repetitively in the same time period over and over. "A father has murdered his 17 year old son for being homosexual. At 5:16 AM last night when—"

Suddenly he feels like collapsing, screaming into thin air until his throat is hoarse. He used up his lives. He couldn't save Keith. He couldn't save Keith.  _Keith;_  the one person that's held his life backwards for so long,  _Keith_ ,  _Keith_ , his lips feel dry as he opens them slowly, curling onto himself as he slowly cries. It hurts more now, more because he's seen their memories, had a chance to really  _meet_  Keith for the first time since he's died. And that hurts more, instead of being an old scar, it's suddenly an open wound all over again.

His eyes flicker over to his phone, his thoughts shuttering and collapsing all at once.

7:08 AM

 _November,_   _2009._

That's the date. Not the  _current_  date, but another past date. The year he moved out from home, the year he started dating the guy at the coffee shop just down the road, the year that him and his father fought, the year that Pidge cut her hair in a single clump, the year that Lance realized that drinking solves nothing. 2009 was a hard year for him, a year of self discovery within his 19 year old body, self discovery he wishes could have waited until he was emotionally equipped to handle it. He sits up, looking to the side and frowning at a photo of him and Keith, them as children, perched on his dresser, staring at him from his bed.

The funny thing is, Lance never put photos of Keith up before. Keith was always a sour memory to him, everything containing Keith within his mind always hurt so he's always actively tried to forget everything about him. Lance raises slowly, hearing the sink running from his kitchen and he can't help but wonder  _what the fuck_.

"Hello?" He calls out, voice tentative. "Is someone there?"

"Stop being stupid." A deeper voice cuts back, a voice he's never heard before, but is achingly similar to  _something_ —Lance feels the name on the tip of his tongue, but he refuses to say it, refuses to sink his toes into black waters that'll sink him once and for all—and Lance startles into an upright position, sleepiness finally leaving him completely. "I made breakfast, come eat."

"You—"

 _Keith,_  his mind supplies before it shutters and everything becomes hazy. He's about to cry, he realizes, his eyes are being blurred by tears. Keith,  _Keith._  Keith tall, with slicked back hair in a  _stupid_ , stupid, mullet. Still wearing an absurd red coat and white sneakers, but he's not 10. He's not 10. He's an adult, he's alive and Lance can't help but cover his mouth in an attempt to smother the sobs that come falling out. "Lance?" Keith says, sounding worried and Lance can't help but burrow his face into Keith's chest and just sob. "What the hell? Did you have a bad dream?"

"Keith I'm so sorry," Lance says frantically, words he's suppressed for  _years_  suddenly bubbling out, "I let you die—I can't—I'm too stupid to figure out who killed you, I can't figure it out, but you mean so  _much_  to me. You always have. My entire life, my entire life has always belonged to you and I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm not enough to keep you alive, I just—"

"Shut up," Keith snaps back, pulling Lance into a chaste quick kiss, before smiling in a soft, longing way. "I don't need an idiot like you saving me, anyway."

"I wish we could trade places." Lance hiccups, and vaguely, he wonders if this is the dream. Maybe one of those trippy dreams where you wake up within a dream and it's a giant slap in the face, the subconscious telling things that the waking mind is too stupid to grasp. He said this once, years ago when he was 15 to Hunk who had slapped him and cried saying ' _Never say that, I would never want you to die_ ' and Lance had felt so terrible.

Keith frowns, face becoming suddenly too sober.

"No." He says, voice cutting and cold, "I would never let that happen. Don't even say that."

 _This is a dream,_  Lance thinks, looking to Keith, trying to make a mental note of  _what_  this dream could even mean. "You said that before," Lance muses sullenly, looking towards the window and watching the rain splatter against the frame. "When we were kids, when I said I would go back in time in order to save you, no matter what, you said 'I don't need an idiot like you saving me'. Asshole. You don't change, do you?"

"Neither of us do, apparently." Lance watches as Keith pulls back, kissing Lance twice and Lance feels the world suddenly tilting and then he's—

His eyes snap open to the sound of running water from the kitchen. Both his brother's plastered to his sides, and Lance covers his eyes, but refuses to cry. It was just a dream.  _Maybe it's a good omen_ , because out of all the dreams and nightmares involving Keith, Keith has never been older than the moment he died. Lance could never see the future with Keith older, living and happy, but apparently it's plausible. Keith  _can_  grow up. Lance will make sure of it: no matter the sacrifice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He repeats how he ended up in the nurses office.

It was, after all, the situation that had changed the future the most out of everything he had done. Maybe, during that try, he had done something kind of right. That, and it gives him more quiet time in order to try and  _think_. 

As he silently takes his time on the nurses office bed trying to conjure up a big enough plan to actually beat all of this, looking up at the ceiling his entire mind races. None of it makes sense, if he's the cause—he will accept this as a fact for the time being, Pidge is rarely ever wrong even when she doesn't have all the facts—that means it's somebody that knows of both Keith and Lance. But why not kill Lance? Why kill Keith? It doesn't make sense that Shiro would kill Keith, but he  _did_  see him leave the bank where Keith was hung. He can't dismiss that completely. 

But—his fingertips feel cold and he flexes his hand, aware that he can feel the blood rush to his ears and it makes him choke, suddenly overwhelmed by grief—this isn't the original time line. There's no way for him to truly know if it was Shiro, or he imagined it, or if he's losing his goddamn mind, or that maybe he had altered the original form of murder.

"Why would an adult kill a child?" Lance says out-loud, regretting his choice of words immediately as soon as the school nurse turns away from his book, glancing at Lance with wide, worried eyes. He hadn't  _meant_ to say that out-loud, definitely not. 

"What do you mean, Lance?"

 _No turning back now,_  Lance can't help but think, pushing himself up as he glances away from his teacher, he doesn't want to see his reaction, he doesn't want to see how this adult will fail him as well, in order to look out of the window. "Why would an adult kill a child? What would be their reason?" He leaves out that there really isn't any reason good enough to kill a child, because that's not something a child would say themselves. 

He hears abrupt shuffling, before he can feel the looming presence standing at the end of Lance's bed. Lance looks towards him at the movement and he doesn't like what he sees. "Do you know who's this dangerous person?"

The same conversation, the same  _way_  but Lance for some reason feels like this version is more dangerous. The teacher in front of him has a stern, creased look of concern but not for  _Lance_. It could just be because Lance had eluded something that is probably very strange for a child to say, or maybe he thinks Lance is in sudden direct harm. But the man at the end of his bed looks dangerous. Lance swallows thickly, for a second actually scared. 

He shakes his head vigorously like a wet dog immediately, childish and quick, before he looks down to his hands, purposefully twiddling his thumbs. "No, it's just from a movie I was watching..."

"I see," he says simply, patting Lance's head, and Lance feels disconnected as the teacher says quietly, "You really had me worried for a second there."

"So why would an adult kill a child?" Lance asks again, feeling his throat dry up. This feels mildly important, or really important. He wishes, briefly, that Pidge was here with him. She would know right away, the answers would line up in front of her and scream at her on what to do. But this, this all muddles Lance's head and makes the future before him blur in reverse.

"Hmm," he hums gently, lifting his hand away from Lance's head before looking out the window. Lance is suddenly struck by how ugly his teacher is, it's a difficult feeling to grasp but even as an adult Lance had begun to think of himself as ' _ugly_ '. The wrinkles from age begin to become more and more prominent and the glow of life in a child's eyes begins to die in someone's adult years. Adults all look so washed up and miserable. So  _ugly_. He had always wondered what kind of adult he and Keith would grow up into, but could never imagine Keith's childish form growing up into the hideousness of what all adult's contain. "I guess because they're either a really bad person,  _or_ , maybe the child knows something they shouldn't?"

Lance blinks, shoulders freezing in taunt alarm as he looks up.

 _Knows something they shouldn't_?

"Like, like what?"

"Is this have to do with you freaking out in class, Lance?"

"Yeah, yeah, but  _what_  would a child know that an adult wouldn't want them to know?" Lance presses for harder, pieces suddenly clicking. Keith was disposed of, thrown  _away_. He had to have known something he shouldn't have known, to have accidentally stumbled up on something that was supposed to remain a secret. "Adultery? Murder? Rapist? People have a lot to hide, but most people wouldn't kill to hide their secrets."

The nurse frowns at him, face creasing in worry before he shrugs, Lance for a moment realizes he's messed up. A child doesn't talk like that. Quickly he clamps his mouth shut, feeling frustrated but eager. "Well if you're so wound up about the show I think you watched, shouldn't you know? That kid was killed because he saw his friend's father with another woman. It's just a show Lance, most people would never kill a child just because they saw something like that. You have nothing to worry about, Lance."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Lance?"

He stirs to Keith's voice, glancing over at him from over his shoulder and smiling slightly. When had he went back to class? He was too busy mauling the words over and over and over until he's looked at it from every possible angle. Keith caught an adult doing something and they killed him for it, it seems like the most simple answer, the easiest most possible reason to why, but it still doesn't leave him any closer to figuring out  _who_  did it.

"Keith," Lance offers back softly, listening to the bell vibrate across the room, the darkening sky outside the class windows leaving him with a sinking feeling. Another day has went by and he still isn't any closer to the truth. He stands slowly, watching in an almost detached way as Keith slips his gloves on before holding out Lance's.

"Are you okay?" Keith asks instead, still frowning with a mild wrinkle between his brows. He guesses that makes sense, Keith was like this as well the original time he stood up on top of a desk and started screaming.

"I'm fine. My mom is here, right?"

Keith looks at him carefully, hands falling to his side. Lance, for a single second, can't tear his eyes away from the mittens. Soft, small and red. Keith is still a child. Keith has never lived past this week of his life, and if Lance can't fix this, he never will. "Yeah, they're in the teacher's lounge."

"Let's go then," because he needs to hear if anything in the conversation has changed, if he's managed to change anything at all. He doubts it, he's just been living the past out with minor inconveniences. Mostly he muses on whether or not his mom will ask, for the third time, "Spaghetti or curry?"

"What?" Keith asks, looking confused. He grabs Keith's hand after that, smiling as warmly as he can in order to relieve him. Right now everyone is pretty sure he's going off of the deep end, which he probably is at this point. Watching Keith die over and over is bound to leave some deep impression on his delicate psyche.

"Keith mentioned Lance has been acting weird lately, plus his behaviour in class was worrying..." Allura lists, and Lance wonders if his mom is going to ask 'spaghetti or curry?' for what he wants for dinner when they get home. Keith will still come home with him, eat dinner with his family, then Lance and his mom and his dumb siblings will walk Keith home because it's late and the next day will repeat. Then Keith will  _die_. All like clock work, all as its supposed to. "Do you know if Lance is possibly being abused?"

His mother's reply is muffled from the other side of the wall, and Keith's grip tightens. "You'd tell me if anyone was bullying you."

Lance can only nod mutely.

"Hey Keith?" Lance whispers back, a sudden urge striking him. Keith looks to his side, bright eyes blinking in curiosity. "Can we go play with your brother?"

"Shiro?"

"Yeah, I just want to meet and get to know him better."

Keith just looks mildly embarrassed, but nods eagerly at the suggestion. He's never really put much thought into it, past once stating ' _your brother is scary_ ' but maybe all this time Keith _wanted_ Lance to be close to Shiro? Did he unknowingly close that possibility for Keith that time he declared he was too scared of Shiro? "Of course," Keith says, pulling Lance forward, "But we have to tell your mom first!"

"Tell me what?" Lance's mom pops out of the teacher's lounge, expression stiff but pretending  _to_  be gentle. She looks worried, of course she does, Lance would be worried too if his child started randomly screaming in the middle of class and has shown weird lapses in mental stability.

"We're going to play with Keith's brother, we'll be back home for dinner later."

His mom frowns briefly, before nodding in understanding, "Alright. Spaghetti or curry?"

Keith glances at Lance when the question is asked, expression crinkling. And Lance, for a moment, wonders if maybe Keith see's what Lance was eluding to for a second, but he abruptly shrugs it off completely, turning away from Lance to smile at Lance's mother. "I want curry." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"So you're the rumored boyfriend?"

Shiro asks as he's placing a hat on Keith's head before motioning to the backyard for them to go play out there. Keith was right, Shiro  _is_  soft. Lance can tell within minutes of meeting Shiro that Shiro has a soft personality, gentle and kind. Its just something about how his smile reaches his eyes, Lance doesn't know how to explain it. But when you're an adult you can just  _feel_  when people are off. Shiro just isn't. "Keith is always talking about you."

"Hush!" Keith hisses back, elbowing Shiro in an almost embarrassed movement. "I do not  _always_  talk about you, don't get any ideas Lance."

 _But still_ , Lance can't help but think, reaching out for Keith's hand almost instinctively out of fear of losing him in this moment. It's too soon. He still has time.  _It doesn't excuse that I saw him coming off of that beach_.

"It's okay if you do," Lance says, breaking out into peels of laughter when Keith's yanks away his hand all embarrassed hissing ' _I don't!_ ' watching as he rushes forward to Shiro's side, Shiro glancing down at him, the sides of his eyes crinkled as he explains to Keith exactly how he should slug Lance with a snowball.

Maybe its reckless, or maybe it's the only way to save Keith—he's putting all of his bets on Shiro not being the killer—but even if Shiro  _is_  the killer he'll know for sure. It, at the very least, will eliminate him as a suspect. He waits until Keith is across the field, building a tiny fort before they begin their snow battle, Shiro beginning to make his own, before approaching him.

"Shiro," Lance begins, swallowing roughly. Pride and shame will get him nowhere. "I need to talk to you."

"What about?"

"I know this will sound crazy but Keith is going to be murdered on the 17th." Lance starts with, bracing himself in a powerful stance before meeting Shiro's eyes again. He has to be  _strong_. No one cares about Keith more than him, but more than that, siblings care about each other even more. If Shiro really isn't the killer, he'll be a powerful ally to have on his side. He can save Keith. He _will_. "I'm still not sure if you're the killer or not, I've seen you walk away from a crime scene, but I'm putting my bet on you not being the killer. Call it gut instinct? I guess."

Shiro blinks exactly seven times, his mouth falling open in silence, before he brushes his thighs off of snow and looks to Lance more seriously, "I don't understand what you're getting at, why do you think Keith is going to be killed?"

"I'm 27 years olds. The Keith in my time line died 17 years ago for me." Lance tries to avoid having his voice crack or  _anything_ , but it still does. It always does whenever he speaks of Keith in the past-tense. The Keith that had died. "He—he was strangled then thrown away like he was  _trash_!" He glances to where Keith has raised his head to peer curiously across the field, half his face blurred out by his mini snow castle, no doubt wondering why Lance is talking to his brother with such a serious look on his face, "No matter how many times I go back I can't save him. I can't do it. I don't know who killed him or  _why_."

He's ready for any reaction from Shiro, honestly. He can't even begin to phantom what he might say, but this is Keith's brother, and he needs  _help_. He can't do this on his own anymore. Plus, enlisting the help of his prime suspect seems like the easiest way to fix this entire mess. Isn't that what people always say? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

"Why, why are you asking me for help?"

"You're Keith's brother, who's better to protect him then that?" Lance says, the laced venom of ' _and if you fail, I will know for sure_ '. He got this trick from Pidge, who had done it to Lance way back in the day when they were around fourteen years old. He had been eating all her snacks but kept saying he wasn't and that Hunk was doing it, so, to eliminate the possibilities she took Hunk out with her and left Lance to 'guard' her snacks—pretending that she believed in Lance the entire time, as well—Lance couldn't let such a prime time go so he had eaten them all and proved to Pidge who was doing it, after all.

It's almost like bait, he guesses.

"How do I know you're telling the truth? Like, I'm kind of worried, Keith has been saying you've been acting weird... shouldn't I just tell your parents that you're kind of—"

"I know something I shouldn't." Lance intervenes stubbornly, looking back to Keith and waving him over, "Something Keith has only told me in a different time line than this one."

Keith jogs up to them immediately, smiling brightly at Lance before it falls just as quickly, "Keith your dad is in Korea and you've never met him. Your mom says he hasn't even seen your face before, right? Your grandpa has also said you're a mistake." It feels merciless, and Lance doesn't like being mean to Keith, but he needs to prove his point quickly. He doesn't have long. He needs to fix all of this  _now_.

Keith blinks, then frowns. "How do you know that? I've never told you that. Shiro did you tell him that?" Keith snaps immediately, frowning at his older brother viciously.

"You're also secretly convinced I like Pidge," Lance adds, just for the extra measure. He's not even really sure if this is true, but Keith had acted like he thought Lance would break up with him for Pidge in the time line before this one as though it was eventually going to happen. Keith's ears go red, words spluttering over his lips before he now directly glares at Shiro.

"You told him!?"

"Oh," Shiro says, glancing with wide eyes between Keith and Lance, before going pale as though he's seen a ghost, "Uh? Yeah? Sorry."

Keith turns abruptly on his heel—not before sticking his tongue out, with good reason—at Shiro before angrily storming back into his house. Lance smiles softly when Keith get's frustrated enough to fling his left boot across the floor not before it hits the wall and clatters uselessy to the ground, snow pooling off of it's soles and onto the hardwood floor.

"Oh god," Shiro says, looking up at Lance still from his crouched position, "First of all I don't know how I feel about my little brother dating a 27 year old, if that's true. Let's pretend it is right now."

"Ah," Lance offers, scratching at the back of his head awkwardly, "Yeah it is kind of weird. Keith kissed me and I kind of felt like a pedophile for a moment? It was weird."

"Right..." Shiro offers warily, standing up properly now. "So what do I need to do?"

"I think Keith figures out something he shouldn't," Lance says, hoping that Shiro will jump in on his own at some point and add some of the missing pieces, though he knows that's probably too much to ask for. If it was this easy to solve, he would've already managed to do it by now. "Because even when I broke up with him, he still died. So I don't think it has anything to do with us dating."

"How... how many times have you done this now?"

"I don't know. A lot. I think the only way to stop it is either to catch the killer or stop Keith from finding out what he did. I just need you to watch over him extra carefully for awhile, while I try and figure this out. Of course, if he dies again, I'm going to assume you did it." Lance offers, glancing at Shiro as scarily as he can for an adult stuck in a child's body. Shiro only looks mildly put-off.

"Found out something he shouldn't? Also please stop saying I'm going to kill my brother," Shiro pauses, rubbing slowly at his chin, "I mean of course I'll protect Keith, but it'll be kind of difficult. I don't see him 24/7."

"We can do shifts." Lance offers quickly, "Just we need to make sure he doesn't end up alone."

"Alright," Shiro says, hand dropping to ruffle the top of Lance's head before retracting it almost nervously with a whisper ' _right you're an adult that's kind of weird_ ' before shrugging, "This is all really weird, but I'd rather Keith be safe rather than calling your mother and checking you in with a psychiatrist right away. But, I will, trust me, after the 17th passes I'm definitely going to get a psychiatrist to speak to you."

He reaches down for a pile of snow, smiling at Keith from across the field to where Keith is nervously watching both Lance and Shiro from the top floor window. Lance can't help but smile.

"Hopefully I'll be home by then."

 

 


	5. Death Three II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after a century i come back with a new shitty chapter
> 
> THANKS FOR READING
> 
> next chapter the killer will be revealed SO PLACE UR BETS NOW ON WHO IT IS

 

 

Keith get's the call on a Thursday morning, October 2012.

He likes to think of this day as the day his life had finally come to a complete stop: finally, the circle has reached it's end, finally, he's greeted by the misery that should have followed the moment he first fell in love with Lance, all those years ago when they were children.

No one really expects  _the_ call. Not really, even if your loved one has been missing for two years there's always a part of yourself that holds on that they're okay, that they'll come back to you no matter what. Because isn't that what all the romance movies say? True love beats all, isn't that it? They got engaged 3 weeks ago, in four months they planned to get married, that was the plan. It was true love, they've been dating so long and had so many more goddamn years ahead of them none of it made any sense. Lance was supposed to grow old with him, to be there until the very fucking  _end_.

"I'm sorry to inform you we have found a body that has been identified as Lance McClain, we would like you to come down to station—"

What people don't tell you about death is the sudden blossoming of numbness that takes over you at it's declaration. Keith chokes, stumbles and grabs at the kitchen counter, fingers shaking as the birds outside sing to the good weather, the beginning of the sun to creep in through the blinds as the apartment alights in a soft haloed glow. It's so picturesque, the entire world is cheery and beautiful and yet the only good thing in his entire life is gone. The coffee machine behind him beeps shrill and obnoxiously just as he shoves his shoes on, pulls his jacket on and runs out the door.

The police guide him in by the arm, maybe because Keith looks like he's going to fall down any second but they lead him into sitting down in a secluded office before a gentle looking female officer is in front of him by the second blink.

"Lance—Lance it isn't Lance," Keith decides first, because it can't be. Lance is supposed to be with Hunk, they're supposed to be playing video games and cursing and being obnoxious like fourteen year olds even though they're turning 23 soon, not dead. Lance isn't supposed to be  _dead_.

"We had the parents confirm the body," she says, tone gentle but firm, "He was found on the beach by two morning joggers. Do you know if he was meeting anybody?"

Keith finally feels the numbness creep away and the wash of dread splash over him.  _Ah_ , Keith can't help but think as tears spill forward, shoulders angling downwards as he places his face into his hands. He suddenly get's it. All his life his mother has been telling him it's only in true moments of bliss and happiness do they reveal themselves as lies, true happiness is a facade to true pain. She's always told him this and yet he never listened because he had found his true love unlike his mother, he had succeeded in being happy where she could not. "Was," he chokes out, fingers trembling over his cheeks, "He killed?"

She pauses, form stiffening. "Were you not informed?"

"I don't know," Keith confesses, trying to keep his voice from trembling, "So he was?"

She nods, slowly raising herself from her seat, "Would you like a couple of minutes to process the news?"

"No," Keith decides on, because he doesn't want to be alone. His entire life he hasn't been  _alone_ , he's always had Lance. Every single step of the way he had Lance, but now he doesn't, now he really is alone. "Ha," he starts with, voice hiccuping and he feels gross, he can feel snot and tears bundling up on his neck and face and it's like a baby screaming because they're hungry, that's probably how ugly he looks at the moment. "Who did it?"

"We don't know yet."

"Right, of course," he wants to say it really doesn't matter who killed Lance because pretty soon once he's done feeling sorry for himself he'll hunt down the fucker himself and kill them, just so its even. No amount of justice in the world can fix what they did, they took away  _Lance_. "He was at the beach? He told me he was meeting up with Hunk."

"Hunk?"

"Mutual friend," Keith says automatically, tightening his fingers before loosening them and repeating the process almost endlessly. "I don't know why he was there, he hates the beach at night he says it's creepy."

"Have you ever suspected him of an affair?" She pauses, before quickly adding, "These are routine questions, nothing is certain."

"Lance? Affair?" He laughs, really does  _laugh_. A bordering manic laughter he can't help but feel bubble over, "We've been dating since we were  _kids_ , like 10 years old. Never. Definitely not. We even use each other's phones regularly, actually they look the exact same so half the time I ended up with his by mistake. Definitely not."

He's still crying, but she ignores the stream of tears with cold professionalism. He doesn't blame her or resent her for her attitude, she probably does this on a weekly basis. There's still a soft pity in her eyes, so he knows she cares but she's just trying to do her job. "Where were you last night?"

_Oh_ , yeah. Yeah. The spouse always did it, right? Didn't he say that to Lance once? Lance had smacked him, laughing as he hissed ' _you better not kill me, asshole!'_  It doesn't feel so great, in reality, when it actually happens though. The sudden strike of anger that flares at the slightest casual mention that  _he_ , himself has killed the only one person he's truly loved. He inhales, then exhales slowly. "I was with my mom and my brother, we were discussing wedding stuff..."

Because they were going to get married.

Suddenly the thin line of sanity he was trying to hold onto finally  _snaps_ and he can't help but lean forward onto himself, tears falling from his eyes and onto his knee's as he stares wide-eyed into his open palms, lips and fingers trembling and everything around him blurs in noise and vision. He wanted to be like Lance was when he was a kid when his little brother Victor went missing from a mall—three years later they held the funeral, and Lance had stood firmly amongst his siblings, comforting the younger one's even though he was obviously hurting—and Lance had remained so  _strong_  despite the grief his family was facing, despite  _everything_.

He can't do it though. He can't.

When he eventually does stop sobbing, embarrassed that he had a completely meltdown in a police station, he isn't greeted by the impassive face of the female officer, nor is he greeted by Lance trying to wake him up, he's not greeted by their ceiling or Lance's arm trying to smother him, or even Shiro or his mother. He opens his eyes blearily blinking away the hazy film of tears covering his eyes to the sound of loud laughter and the noise of hundreds of people gathered in one place.

A mall.

"Lance?" Keith stiffens, looking upwards—strange, he hasn't had to look  _up_  at anyone in ages—his gaze flickering over Lance's mom. "What's wrong?"

"M—Mom," because he's never called her 'Lance's mom' she's always just been  _mom_. "What's—"

He blinks, his eyes blurring before him as though a screen was placed before him, his fingers going numb as he can see  _himself_ —the child him, the him in a bright red coat, white worn down sneakers and hair wild and not brushed, his eyes blank of any colour—he feels himself trembling suddenly, the numbness settling in his knees.

"Sha'll we make a deal?"

His lips suddenly feel dry and he can't  _talk_. Lance's mom continues dragging him forward, but it doesn't feel like he's  _moving_. A deal? Why would he make a deal with  _himself_?

"It's an easy exchange, isn't it, Keith?" Slowly the space between him and and  _himself_? Slowly, the child him raises a single finger, pointing to himself. And Keith finally realizes  _who_  he really is, he's Lance. The Lance before they met, a younger smaller Lance with still chubby-fingers. His heart quivers and almost  _drops_. "Yourself for his life and his brother's."

"What—"

"To change the future all you need to do is turn to her and say 'Mom, right now someone is trying to take Victor' and the future will change. Lance will live." Lance will live? His lips feel numb suddenly, suddenly it all makes sense. He's always heard about it: the randomness of the universe, but more so that one action causes a domino effect. A single thing can change the whole future. Immediately, Keith nods, the shivering exhale of ' _yes, please, yes_ ' to make the exchange in a heartbeat. Lance should have a longer life, Lance is more deserving of one. Lance is everything to him.

Without Lance, he can't go on.

It isn't dramatics, it's just the truth. All his life he's been pulled forward by Lance, his entire miserable goddamn life. Everything was given to him through Lance. How is he supposed to live without him? It's stupid, he guesses. When they were kids Lance was obsessed with this time traveling comic where the main protagonist went back to the past in order to stop his lover's murder, but in exchange the protagonist died. Lance was always so sincere in saying that he would save Keith, no matter  _what_  if Keith ever died.

But the thing is, their lives aren't equal. Isn't that shown right now? The world is giving  _Lance_  another chance to live at the expense of Keith. It was always supposed to be the opposite way around, he should have died and Lance should have lived. He guesses it makes sense, the first one in love always loses.

He allows his eyes to flicker for a moment, Lance's face at the forefront of his mind smiling ear-to-ear as he reaches out to Keith. The Lance that had sprawled himself across the beach and laughed at Pidge for wearing a sweater and shorts. The Lance that had failed every single math quiz in their second year of high school because he was too busy trying to copy off of Keith—and failing at it—until Lance was smacked over the head by Shiro. He remembers their first 'teenage' date, the lights purple and pink as Lance had dragged Keith beneath them, chatting happily about some waffle shop up ahead, and it's  _Lance_. Every single moment of happiness has always been Lance. He wants to live, no one  _truly_  wants to die, but he can't live without Lance and he can hardly live with himself knowing he could have saved Lance.

Lance was always fascinated with heroes, and Keith always managed to be jealous of them. Heroics have always captured a part of Lance's heart that he was never able to own, but, he smiles to himself lightly as he squeezes Lance's mom's hand a bit more tightly. Isn't he like a hero right now? Sacrificing himself for the one he loves, because that's what heroes do, right?

He inhales sharply, forcing on a monotone facade, "Mom, right now someone is trying to take Victor."  
  
  
  
  
  


 

It's boring to relive his childhood, honestly.

He dies like a clockwork, and wakes up at the exact same time and the exact same date following his death: he had only remembered reliving his childhood once after the whole exchange rate, his heart practically falling from his chest ready to run into Lance's arms when they meet for the first time again. Then he dies right before Lance's birthday. He wishes he didn't have to die so close to Lance's birthday, but it  _is_  the exchange. He knew eventually he would have to die in order for Lance to live, but he never thought this was why Lance died.

As he fell from the bridge all he could see was Lance.

People always say your life flashes before your eyes when you're on the verge of death within 5 seconds, and it did, it really did. It was just Lance and him smiling at each other from across the table as Pidge and Hunk told them they were the grossest people they know.  _My happiest memory, maybe_? Before he could think past that, everything had went black. He really did assume he died.

He  _should_ have died.

"Keith, wake up," Shiro says, toothbrush jammed into his mouth as he rolls Keith off of the bed, "You need to go to school."

"Shiro?" He mutters groggily, raising heavily from his position and frowning at the small hands—a  _child's_  hands—beneath him that greet him. For a moment he almost wants to hyperventilate, he should have died. Did he live? Did he  _fail_? If he's alive that means that Lance is going too, his fingers tremble at the thought before he's slipping out of bed and looking wildly around, "Lance—"

"What about your boyfriend?" Shiro says, half-teasing—as he  _always_  is whenever he mentions Lance, this habit lasts well into Keith's teenage years before Shiro finally realizes that Lance and him aren't just 'kids dating' but were at that point suddenly 'seriously dating'—as he places Keith's lunch onto his dresser, "I made lunch, don't forget it."

"Where's Lance?"

"Probably still asleep," Shiro acknowledges and Keith suddenly realizes something. He's already lived this  _twice_ : which means he's gone back again. He frowns, stilling. What was it that Shiro said after Keith asked for Lance—originally he asked for Lance because he had nightmares every day about Lance dying until he himself had died—but now it's because he should be a deadman but he's alive and he  _needs_ Lance to be alright.

"I'm going now," Keith says, slipping his socks on and muttering a dull thanks to Shiro for lunch, "Later."

"Be safe!" Shiro calls behind him and Keith doesn't acknowledge it as he runs out of the house.

_Why am I reliving this life again_?  
  
  
  
  


 

 

He wakes up to the sound of Lance's little brother's laughing.

"Lance," Keith says, and Lance turns to the sound of his voice, eyes looking too heavy and Keith's heart aches. He has to die soon  _again_  and Lance's mental state every time after gets worse. But it shouldn't, Lance shouldn't even know that he died before, multiple times now. Keith reaches out to touch Lance's face, his hand feels heavy against him and Keith belatedly recognizes the feeling as something slightly too intimate to be a touch between two 10 year olds. "Are you okay?"

Something is wrong, with Lance, with the him-dying thing. The first time Lance had moved out the motions of the day perfectly, but the second and third time he had changed. Everyone around Keith is stagnant in what they say and do, except Lance.  He should have realized something was off when Lance was asking about his dad, his  _brother_ , even the Lance he had grown up with for years hadn't bothered to actually ask about his dad or really get to know Shiro until they were at least 13. 

More so, Lance had tried to  _break-up_  with him. 

Something is definitely wrong. 

Lance smiles tightly at him, a smile Keith has gotten used too after they learned how to argue with each other in their teenage years, especially when they were becoming more  _adultish_  and building a life together. Keith's throat constricts and suddenly he can't  _breathe_ , he get's it suddenly. 

"Lance," he says, allowing his fingers to drag along Lance's jawline,  and he inhales sharply. He's just going crazy, of course the past is always changing if he's in it and acting as an uncertain model, despite him always trying to maintain what he did in the first round, maybe him even stepping on a rock wrong changes everything. "I'm really glad I met you." 

 

 

 

 

 

Something is not right.

He blinks, the creepy feeling on his eyes moving beneath his eyelids making him grit his teeth but he can't  _wake up_. Before him is flashes of things. Of Keith, older, younger, but never past the age of 20, at least. There is one memory Lance see's the most, them at a festival, fireworks exploding into the sky like flowers that illuminate the space around them, and Lance is pulling Keith along, but in just one moment their grip becomes tighter and Keith glances at him, lips smiling in a shy heart-shaped smile and Lance's heart feels so  _heavy_  in that memory, as though he's  _screaming_  how much he loves Keith. There is a memory of them, a bit older, Keith playing a gameboy or something equally out of style nowadays, telling Lance to curtly shut up. Memories of them holding hands, laying in the grass as they stare up at the sky that dances and stretches into a void abyss that can never be contained, or reached.

Memories. Memories. Memories.

Lance can feel them all being played out before him scene by scene, yet none of it feels real, but feels so breath taking at the same time. Finally, the memories come and shutter behind his eyelids before everything is going backwards, rewinding until it's Lance standing beneath the moonlit sky, all alone.

_This is when I die_. No, he turns onto his cheek, discomfort worming itself throughout his body, fear being pumped into his veins heavy and vile. The Lance in the memories turns to look behind him, smiling sadly to  _somebody_ —somebody he trusts?—his hand coming up to cover his eyes to hide his tears. When they open again the sharp gleam of the blade reflecting the moonlight and all Lance can think is;  _this is where I die_.

His eyes snap open just as the blade comes close to his stomach.

His hands immediately clamp over his mouth to muffle his scream.  _What was that_? Panic. He feels his brain suddenly zooming and aligning in minuscule details that make his brain  _rattles_. He doesn't remember that. No, that couldn't have been real, he's never even  _died_. But that wasn't a dream. He knows that wasn't a dream. That was definitely not a dream. His breathing betrays him, feeling a deep cold dread wash over him suddenly.

He blinks.

_When that man tried to abduct your brother._   _Do you really not remember?_

His heart feels heavy, chest suddenly sinking in within him and all he can hear is the steady ' _tick, tock, tick, tock_ '.

_So either you're the cause of the murder, or the only one that can stop it. So let's consider for two seconds that you're the cause, why? How?_

How? Why?

In the distance he can hear the strum of a guitar fading in the background, the whispered chirps of birds as Keith's grown-up smile stretches across his face, head lolling side-to-side as he sings loudly and  _terribly_. Lance laughs loudly, hand coming up to cover his mouth before he mocks Keith's bad attempt at wooing him.  _Stupid,_ Lance can feel himself thinking within that current moment and time,  _I love you, I love you so much_.

_Think, Lance. What actually happened?_

Static fills his ears almost so suddenly.

His head feels muddled, his thoughts no longer light and breezy, but heavy and laced with things he needs to open up. But doesn't want too. He doesn't want too anymore. He doesn't want to reveal the truth he doesn't want to know. None of this makes sense. Is he really losing his mind? Is this all a dream? Has he finally— _finally_  jumped over the edge of normality and dived straight into craziness?

He leans forward into his hands, crying silently. "I'm too  _stupid_ , I don't get it. I'm too fucking  _stupid_."

Slowly he looks up, the clock right in front of him across the room and sitting heavy on it's place on the wall. He's in his bedroom, the walls closing in on around him like a trap. Wasn't he just with Keith and the other's? Why is he back at home?

_Tick, tock, tick, tock_.

If time—he pauses, feeling his lips suddenly dry, and he feels so  _crazy_ —he pauses in his thoughts, his brother stirring beside him into wakefulness. "If time," he repeats into the open air, looking down at his brother's, "Can go backwards, forwards, sideways or whatever fucking way it  _wants_. Then how do people know the current time they're living in is the right time? What if there are different variations? Different versions?"

"What...?" His slightly older younger brother asks, voice groggily croaking from beside him.

"No—think—Victor,  _think_ , what if, what if time isn't a line but a bunch of fucking circles or something?"

"Swearing is bad," Victor says in a tiny muffled whisper, "Mom will kill you."

"I just—what if someone dies in one circle and the other comes back to save them? But that person keeps dying no matter what? I don't even know what I'm supposed to  _do_. Why am I back here? Why is this the moment I go into in order to save Keith?"

His brother slowly detaches himself from his side, tiny fists rubbing at the corners of his eyes as he yawns into the darkness of their room. Lance feels exhausted, even though he just woke up. The strong need to just slowly fall into a never ending dream tempting, but disorderly. Victor glances to the clock slowly, then back to Lance, eyelashes curled and long, almost fading into the darkness but Lance can see them, each and single hair. Victor exists in this current moment in  _time_. But why?  _Why_?

"Save Keith?" His brother asks in a gentle yawn, "If anything wouldn't Keith be saving  _you_?"

"What?" Lance asks sharply, turning to look at his brother with big eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Lance," Keith says, voice baritone as he glances away and scowls at the sun setting. Lance jerks away from the picture of his brother just waking up, turning his body towards where Keith is putting down the guitar. They've spent the entire day by the beach, just fucking around and scaring the locals into thinking they're two drug-infused teens living the hell out of their life. But they aren't, they're 22 and they've both just graduated university and are about to start anew in their lives. Lance has always hated graduations. A new place. A new life. A new chapter. What if he liked the old chapter? What if he never wants to grow up?

Keith smiles, looking almost orange underneath the fading sun. Lance opens his mouth to tell him, but the words fall short as Keith leans back, head thrown backwards as he exhales noisily. "It's so stupid how nervous I am. If you say no I'm going to punch you."

"What?"

"Marry me."

"I—" Lance turns, his brother's head tilting sideways into a person Lance recognizes him more as. His brother, his younger brother that had just graduated high school, his dumb younger brother that graduated with the highest mark in his entire high school. As a kid, Lance didn't think much of his brother's intelligence, if anything he thought Victor barely had any, being honest. Yet Victor grew up to be such a brat, bratty enough to be on par with Pidge. "What do you mean?"

"God, you're so stupid. Honestly." Victor grumbles, sliding his hands through the sand before raising them, the grains sliding between his fingers. "Think in reverse, obviously. Don't you remember?" His brother's lips move, slow and tauntingly, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"What?" Lance says, tearing his eyes completely away from where Keith is to frown at his brother. "What are you trying to get at?"

Victor groans, rubbing at his face before reaching out and grabbing Lance directly by his collar and  _shaking_  him. "Think! You giant fucking  _idiot_! You know where Keith's body is going to be dumped the first time, you  _know_  how Keith dies the original time! Right!? The original time line is what matters, isn't it, you dumb, giant  _idiot_! Just wait there and you'll see the killer, you'll  _know_!"

Lance's eyes widen.

"Lance, wake up!" His second little brother kicks him at the statement, "Or you're going to be  _late_!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keith is supposed to die tonight.

He's so stupid.

Victor is right. All he has to do is sit by and  _wait_. There isn't any need to replay the motions differently in order to make the outcome  _different_  he should be trying to make it the same so that when he goes back again, in the next time line, he can stop the killer. He had been focusing so much on saving Keith he couldn't even make sense of allowing Keith to be killed. He walks beside Keith slowly, trying to formulate a good enough plan. He can't ruin it, he can't just continually sit by and watch Keith die, his sanity won't allow it. He needs to get it right the first time and then the second time,  _fix it_.

He can't do anything out of the ordinary, he has to let time play as it originally would and then wait. He can do that, even an idiot like himself can do that. Keith is strangled first, then dumped in the river four blocks from his school. That's easy enough, he can do  _this_. It's what he keeps repeating to himself over and over as the entire day repeats as it has endlessly ever since he's gone back. He waves off his friends as he makes his way to the bank he knows Keith's body will be dumped at. He waits behind a bush, waiting for the killer to arrive dragging Keith's small body and—

His mouth goes dry.

 

 


End file.
